Astounding v30n06 (1943 02) (dongev sas)

THE

WEAPON

MAKERS

by A, E. van VOGT
FEBRUARY - 1943

Pneumococcus Type III, Pneumococcus Type IV. Streptococcus Vlrldans. Friedlander's Bacillus, Streptococcus Hemolytlcus,
Bacillus Influenzae, Micrococcus Calarrhalis, Stapliylococcus Aureus

-gargle

LISTERINE

Quick!

It May Spare You a Deep-seated Cold or a
Nasty Sore Throat

Listerine Antiseptic immediately starts
to kill the threatening germs which'left
the other fellow's nose and throat to
set up housekeeping with you.

The more of these germs Listerine .
Antiseptic destroys, the less chance
there is of a "mass invasion”, of the
tissue, followed by the discomfort of a
cold and sore throat.

In tests with Listerine Antiseptic,
germs on mouth and throat surfaces
were reduced as much as 96.7% fifteen
minutes after a Listerine gargle-— up to
80% one hour after.

We believe this explains Listerine’s
astonishing clinical test record in com-
batting colds. These tests, made over a
period of 11 years, consistently showed:

Regular twice a day Listerine Anti-
septic users had fewer colds and fewer
sore throats than those who did not
use it.

Don’t you think, in view of these •
facts, that Listerine Antiseptic, used
systematically, is a worthwhile pre-

caution against colds as well
as an emergency treatment
when a cold is coming on?

If you've been in contact with those
with colds — if you’ve been in a draft —
if your feet have been wet and cold —
and you feel under par with a cold
coming on, never omit the Listerine
gargle. Lambert Pharmacal Co., St. Louis, Mo.

THE “SECONDARY INVADERS 7 '

Above are some types of "secondary in-
vaders'', millions of which may exist on
the mouth and throat surfaces. They
may cause no harm until body resistance
is lowered when they may invade the
tissue and set up or aggravate the trou-
blesome aspects of the infection you
call a cold. You can see how important

it is to attack them before they get the
upper hand.

Note How Listerine Reduced Germs

Actual tests showed reductions of bac-
teria on mouth and. throat surfaces rang-
ing up to 96.7% fifteen minutes after the
Listerine Antiseptic gargle, and up to
80% one hour after the Listerine gargle.

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AST— 1R

ASTOLtNDIND

SCIENCE-FICTION

Contents for February, 1943 , Vol. XXX, No. 6

John W. Campbell , Jr., Editor, Catherine Tarrant, Asst . Editor

Serials

THE WEAPON MAKERS . . A. E. van Vogt ... ¥

First part of a three-part novel of one man against the two
greatest powers in the whole Solar System — the Isher Empire
itself, ana the vast, secret power of the Weapon Shops.

OPPOSITES— REACT! . Will Stewart .... 95

The ship had been built by beings utterly alien; their ship was
half made of dreaded seetee — and full of a hundred death traps
left by their alien minds I

Novelette

MIMSY WERE THE BOROGOVES .... Lewis Padgett . . . . 52

This^ is the first science-fiction story that I know of which has
considered the children's toys of the far future. Simple little
items — But — What toys I

Short Stories

PLIGHT INTO DARKNESS ...... Webb Marlowe ... 40

A story of the reconstruction period after the war — and the only
possible cure for a hundred-percent-convinced Fascist.

THE MAN IN THE MOON Henry Norton .... 70

The queer little fellow had strange ideas. A harmless little man,
who wanted light, and a workbench — that grew. He didn't quite
seem to fit our busy civilization. Didn't fit Earth at all—

Article

GOD'S FOOTSTOOL Malcolm Jameson . . 76

You may have heard the Earth’s an “oblate spheroid.” If you
think that’s a definite shape, this fact article may make things a
little less clear.

Readers* Departments

THE EDITOR'S PAGE *

IN TIMES TO COME . 39

Department of Prophecy and Future Issues.

THE ANALYTICAL LABORATORY 87

An Analysis of Reader’s Opinions.

PROBABILITY ZERO! . 88

Calling All Liars!

BRASS TACKS . . . 92

Concerning Purely Personal Preferences.

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Gerald H. Smith, Secretary and Treasurer. Copyright, 1943, in U. S. A. and 6reat Britain by
Street & Smith Publications. Int. Reentered as Seeond-elass Matter, February 7, 1938, at the
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.STATE. ,

SILVER

We’re not particularly interested in politics;
technology is considerably more satisfying for
prophets. In technology, process A plus raw
material B can be pretty reliably expected to
produce trend C. There may be some rationale
in political history, but the Mendeleef Table
of political elements is still to be deduced.
The chemist can predict not only the existence
of elements still unseen by man, but the proper-
ties of their salts and compounds, the density,
color, hardness, melting and boiling points and
stability of chlorides and oxides of elements
no man has ever separated.

Occasionally, politics does intrude its unpre-
dictable elements into a chemical reaction,
however, with results that upset the whole
scheme. The Silver Bloc has had an astonish-
ing effect on the chemistry of silver. Silver
mining is an important industry, nearly as
great, financially, as the manufacture of
noodles. To protect the silver-mining States
against the harsh exigencies of competition,
the Silver Bloc fixed a thoroughly artificial
price. The price is so high as to make the
industrial use of American silver impossible.

Silver, as a matter of fact, is one of the most
useful metals known to man. It has the high-
est conductivity for both electricity and heat
of any known material. At a red heat, silver
oxide decomposes into silver metal and free
oxygen; obviously, therefore, silver will not
oxidize at a red heat. Its high resistance to
corrosion makes it an extremely good metal
for making large-scale industrial chemical ware
and chemical pipes, particularly for handling
“fine” chemicals.

Mechanical properties of silver are equally
advantageous. Silver, although not exception-
ally hard or strong in the pure metal, is most
exceptionally tenacious. It has a rubbery
toughness that permits it to stretch under vio-
lent stress where such stronger, harder metals
as stainless steel would tear like paper. The
copper-beryllium alloys that produce bronzes
with a hardness great enough to make steel-
cutting cold chisels, and formed sections with
a strength exceeding that of a good grade of
steel are almost duplicated in silver-beryllium
alloys. When desired, then, silver ninety-eight
percent pure can be given strength and hard-
ness equaling that of steel.

LI1W

Some metals in the table of elements form
almost no alloys; they simply refuse to blend
with other metals and, when melted up with
them, crystallize out separately on cooling.
Other metals have a very great willingness to
mix with others to form true — and useful —
alloys.

Silver is an element willing to alloy with
nearly any of the metals in the table. Since it
will “wet” and alloy with other metals in the
molten state, it makes a wonderful soldering
and brazing material. Its willingness to alloy
is so great it acts as a sort of metallic wetting
agent; just as the wetting agents dissolved in
water tend to make water wetter, more willing
to actually make contact with repellent sur-
faces, silver will make other metals “wet” iron,
steel, and other machine materials to form a
strong, permanent weld. Capper is an excep-
tionally good metal-wetting agent; silver is
even better — which accounts for the enormous
increase in the use of silver brazing and solder-
ing alloys. Also, the silver .solders will stand
higher temperatures without melting loose than
lead-tin solders could.

Silver is one of the few metals in the entire
chemical table that has a combination of
chemical, metallurgical and physical proper-
ties that can make a major industrial metal,
and is, in addition, sufficiently plentiful for
full use. Tens of thousands of tons of the
metal are available in the world, and in the
rocks of the Earth’s crust. The United States
has large resources of its ores. Any technolo-
gist could readily predict that it would become
an ever more important, ever more widely used
material. The increasing industrial use would,
naturally, lead to improved and expanded min-
ing methods, lowered costs, and greater use.

Unfortunately, the technologist would be
wrong. Some people think silver is money.
The Silver Bloc does. They may fear that if
silver mining is expanded it may become so
important an industry as to surpass the noodle
business. They seem to be afraid that, if silver
is released for use in bomb fuses, bomber and
tank parts and such war-industry uses, that
people may get the idea that, unlike gold, silver
is an exceedingly versatile and useful industrial
material.

The Editor.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

6

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NAME

ADDRESS

CITY STATE.

THE WEAPON
MAHERS

By A, E. van Vogt

FIRST part of a three-part novel of one man — currently call-
ing himself Captain Hedrock — against the two greatest pow-
ers in the whole Solar System — the Isher Empire itself, and,
simultaneously, the vast, secret power of the Weapon Shops.

Illustrated by Kramer

I.

A whole year had passed. The trail, Neelan
thought, would be — cold!

He sat, letting the rhythm of the superbly
swift trans-State plane soothe him. It had
not been his fault that he couldn’t get to Earth
sooner. The meteorite, where Carew and he
had been doing the preliminary work on their
strike of “heavy” beryllium, had just entered
the Dead Spot, the extreme opposite side of
the Sun from Earth when the knowledge had
come that Gil was dead.

For nearly a year, the meteorite, its velocity
almost matching that of Earth, had main-
tained its remote position. Finally, however,
a point had been reached where it was pos-
sible to figure out an acceptable orbit for
Carew’s and his simple type freighter.

Carew had landed him at one of the less
expensive spaceports — the paired-atom beryl-
lium mine might be worth its weight in plati-
num, but it wasn’t paying yet— and so, after
twelve months, he was on his way to Imperial
City to find out how his brother had died.

In his pocket were a hundred credits, the
remnants of the large stake he had sunk into
the meteorite mine. He’d probably have to
get a temporary job or — he made a moue of
distaste — go back to gambling.

For a while, Neelan stared down at the
distant, green land, at towns and cities that
flashed by like gorgeous gems from an un-
ending emerald setting.

Suddenly, he was trembling. To think that
he had been away from all this for ten years.
Ten years! Actually to have deserted daz-
zlingly fertile Earth for barren Mars, the drab
moons of Jupiter, and finally an airless meteor-
ite!

What fools men were! They —

Careful, Neelan thought grimly. It was
just as well to remember that life on Earth
under the ever-glorious Empress Isher was not
all harmony and beauty. After all, he had had
a reason.

The thought jarred. It was like a signal
to his mind. It brought memory of the sharp
emptiness that had come to him out there in
space a year ago, his first knowledge that Gil

9 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

was dead. Acute awareness it had been of the
lack of that neural pressure which had con-
stituted, even at that distance, the bond be-
tween his brother and himself.

There had been pain, Neelan remembered
uneasily. Gil had died in agony, suddenly,
without expecting it. The anguish had
bridged the multimiles between Earth and the
meteorite and twisted his own nerves in dread-
ful sympathy.

They had often wondered, Gil and he, and
the scientists, what it would be like for one
to die. The scientists had taken them at the
age of five, identical twins already sensitive
to each other, and magnified the sensitivity
until it was a warm interflow of life force, a
world of dual sensation.

The interrelation had grown so sharp that
at short distances — a few thousand miles —
thoughts passed between them with all the
clarity of the electronic flux in a local tele-
stat.

Those earlier years had been pure joy of
intimate relation; and then at the age of twelve
began the attempt to make them different
without breaking the nervous connection. Like
a kid tossed in to sink or swim, he was sub-
jected to the full impact of Isher civilization,
while Gil was secluded, confined to studious
ways.

Over those years, their intellectual associa-
tion declined; thoughts, though still transmit-
tible, could be concealed. Neelan developed
a curiously strong, big-brother attitude toward
Gil, while Gil —

It was Neelan who noticed the diffident
manner in which Gil tackled adulthood. Gil’s
way of life had made him shy, retiring. He
could go all out on his job as research worker,
but only too clearly the knowledge that his
brother would automatically share all his emo-
tional experiences made him hopeless so-
cially, especially with women.

There was never any question as to who
would leave. On the day that the contract
with the Eugenics Institute terminated, Neelan
announced that he was leaving for Mars. Gil
was going to have his chance at life. Only —

Only it had been death —

Reverie ended. Neelan ’s tautness faded be-
fore the spectacle that was unfolding below
— the beginning of Imperial City. Mile on
mile of suburbs reeled past, bright shiny little
places, each in their park setting, linked to the
greater whole by a lacework of roads.

Minutes later, he climbed out of the airliner
onto the skyscraper roof that was the landing
ground. He wasted no time, but put through
his call immediately to Information Library.
The answer came after considerable delay:

“ — We have no record of a Gilbert Neelan
dying in Imperial City on the day you men-
tion, or on any other day during the past two
years. Furthermore, a checkup with the
Planetary Statistical Bureau has failed to re-
veal his name on the lists of the dead.

"However, it is clear that our records must
be inaccurate, as he is not registered in this
year’s planetary directory. His last known
address was 1671 210th Avenue, Center, Im-
perial City, but that is according to last year’s
records. Will you please tell us how you
learned of your brother’s death—”

Neelan said hastily: “I’ll get in touch with
you later.”

He broke the connection, walked to the
nearest edge of roof, and stood for a long mo-
ment looking down at the mighty city.

At least he had one fact: The Information
Library’s record of Gil’s address was the same
as had been on Gil’s last letters. He would
go there first, and then —

He had a sudden dark sense of destiny.

II,

Darkness was settling over the ancient city
when Neelan stepped out of a public carplane,
and looked around. It was a street of what
had once been fine residences. The house was
equipped with an all-directional sign, already
beginning to glow, which read: “Rooms to
Let.”

The doorbell was answered by a primly
dressed little maid, who returned after a mo-
ment with a fine-looking, buxom young woman
of about thirty-five.

The woman frowned thoughtfully as Neelan
explained his mission, then she shook her head.
She was sorry, but while the name did some-
how seem vaguely familiar, she really couldn’t
remember any Gilbert Neelan having stayed
in her house. Perhaps if she looked at her
accounts she might recall something. His
knowing that it was Room 3, and up to July 17,
4790 Isher, just a year ago. would help.

And of course she’d be glad to let him have
a room for himself. They were lovely rooms
and just one credit a night. Wouldn’t he come
in?

He’d enjoy staying here. There was a con-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

10

stant coming and going of new roomers; had
been ever since she was widowed three years
ago. Life was too rich, too wonderful to spend
it in mourning. She liked change, variety —

She rambled on, sitting down on the edge
of the bed with her accounts. Neelan made an
effort to silenee her agile tongue. He sat with
a twisted smile on his lips, letting the gather-
ing consciousness of the defeat that was here
sink into his mind.

On the very first leg of his search, he had
run into quicksand, a bottomless well — a room-
ing house owned by a vague-minded creature
to whom every boarder was a person dimly
seen, important only in that such and such a
room paid its way.

This poor woman with her desire for a steady
stream of new roomers, new faces— what a
strange restlessness it showed. What was it
that Weapon Shop man on Europa had called
it — a twisted, uncomprehended impulse toward
rebellion against stability, a manifestation of
the adventurous spirit of a dissatisfied era.

Neelan shrugged gloomily. Perhaps the
woman — what was her name? Dendley; per-
haps Mrs. Dendley was right. Life was too
wonderful to spend it in mourning, or in
searching, for the dead.

And Gil was dead. It wasn’t just a matter
of mixed records, or of mystery. He, Neelan,
had felt the hideous flash of pain; and then
the utter black-out of nervous connection. It
had been fast, a matter of seconds; no sick-
ness could ever have struck like that.

Death had come through accident or — mur-
der!

The thought was not new. It was one
that had racked him during all those long
months of waiting on the meteorite. The very
idea of Gil struck down in some dark byway
was — •

An exclamation from the woman jerked his
mind back to her. “Why, yes,” she said, “I
remember now.”

Neelan stared at her, wide-eyed, as she went
on: “He’s that one. No wonder I couldn’t re-
call him.”

She paused; and the shaky thought came to
Neelan that, while there was probably a law
against turning landladies upside down, and
emptying words out of them, it — Before he
could speak or think further, Mrs. Dendley
said:

“He kept some luggage here because, as he
said, he had to conform to the strict home-
address regulations. He even gave me per-

mission to rent his room overnight, but not
for any length of tune, if you know what I
mean. I — ”

“You mean” — Neelan felt blank — “he didn’t
really live here?”

The woman nodded brightly. “That’s right.
He came in once a month to collect his mail
and pay the rent. He said his work made it
necessary for him to sleep at his place of
business.”

She was looking down at her book. “I
never knew where he worked, and he checked
out on July ... let me see . . . yes, July 17th.
That’ll be a year ago last week.”

Neelan nodded, but his muscles were so
rigid that the movement hurt his neck. He
straightened finally, consciously nerving him-
self to face the tremendous fact:

So Gil had left here deliberately — on the
day lie died.

It seemed a start. For surely somewhere
in the city someone would know something.

Illusive hope! The trail, instead of widen-
ing and brightening, grew narrower, more ob-
scure. When he called at the Eugenics In-
stitute, he was informed that it would be nec-
essary to obtain the case history from their
Lakeside branch, and that would take a few
weeks. No, they had had no local correspond-
ence with his brother.

The police publicity agent said: “Do you
know that we’ve had five thousand unsolved
murders in the past two years? This is one
of those curious periods in history when as-
sassination is almost respectable, and one more
murder is like a stone thrown into the dark.
A year ago, you say? Forget it!”

No bank in the capital had any record of a
Gilbert Neelan account. There was a bank
balance of several thousand credits at Lake-
side, and if he would apply to the courts —
It would take about six months.

The Atomic Research Corp. reported that
Gil had left his post in their great Lakeside
branch two years previously, with the purpose
of joining a private firm in Imperial City.
They didn’t know what firm. No application
had ever been made for references.

His work? He had been engaged in estab-
lishing a stable relationship between terrene
and contraterrene matter, a well-explored field,
completely lacking in recent sensational de-
velopments.

Two half-minute telestat ads succeeded
only in reducing Neelan ’s fading capital by

11

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

sixty credits. At the end of three weeks he
had paid Mrs. Dendley twenty-one credits for
rent, and spent another sixteen credits on food,
carplane fare, and person-to-person telestat
calls.

On the morning of the twenty-first day, a
woman from the Eugenics Institute called up
and informed him that the documents of Gil’s
and his case history had arrived from Lake-
side, but had yielded nothing of value. But
would Neelan come in person at five o’clock
that afternoon. The executive professor, Nad
Rayburn, would like to speak to him.

After disconnecting, Neelan stood frowning
beside Mrs. Dendley’s telestat. He remem-
bered the professor from his first personal call,
a distinguished-looking, friendly graybeard.

He’d go all right, he decided grimly. But
on the way he’d take time off for something
more urgent. A man with less than three
credits to his name had better start thinking
in terms of making money — and fast.

He went out for lunch — and then forgot it.
He walked restlessly. The afternoon was half
gone before he remembered food again. Eat-
ing it in a small Self-serve, he felt his basic
indecisiveness, the empty sense of all the time
that had passed, the months that had drawn
so many curtains across the death trail.

And now his search must wait even longer
—while he made some money.

What a laugh that was. In about three
months, the “heavy” beryllium mine would
start to pay at the rate of a hundred thousand
or so credits a month while he — very rmfunnily
— was in serious danger of having to get into
a soup line, and so automatically qualify for
permanent exile to Mars or Venus, where there
was always work of a sort.

Out in the street, Neelan stuffed a coin in
a corner PUBLIC AD machine. “Technical?”
he said, when a girl’s face appeared on the
plate.

An older man replaced the girl, and Neelan
said: “I have the following general qualifica-
tions — ” He outlined his education and ex-
perience: atomic engineering degree, three

years meteorite mining — “I want to empha-
size,” he went on, “that I do not wish to sign
the usual two-year contract. I want a job
distinctly temporary, two months at the out-
side. Have you anything?”

“I’m afraid,” the clerk said, “such positions
are all of a lower classification. The indus-
trial contract, where the firm has to retain you

six months, and you have to remain two
years, is a business tradition. Besides, the
powerful Engineer’s Guild would not permit
employment except under such terms.”

"What do you mean,” Neelan asked, “by
lower classification?”

“There’s an ad here,” said the clerk, “that’s
been running for five days, and was renewed
this morning by registered telestat. I’ll read
it to you:

“Wanted: Man capable of repairing large atomic
motors. No Automatic Repair trainees need apply.
Call in person. Room 1874, Trdllis Minor Building.
Good pay.

“The unique feature about that ad,” the
elerk said in his precise voice, “is that it re-
quires special training in a trade that is almost
nonexistent in large cities, but which you would
have learned in the course of attaining your
degree. The Automatic Repair machines, with
their cheap, fast jobs, have forced the old hand
craftsmen out of business for sixty years now.
Apparently, someone wants the superior,
longer-lasting repair job.

“I would say that ad was your best bet. I
have here a number of other trade-type posi-
tions that — ”

Neelan noted them down, as they were de-
scribed. When finally the machine clicked
off, he felt surer of his future. Something
ought to materialize from the list; and, as
the elerk had said, the first job was the most
promising. The next morning would prove
or disprove its merits. Meanwhile —

The Eugenics Building was a gray-white
shaft that pierced a thousand feet of sky, nar-
rowing as it went up, and finally tapering
sharply to a point.

Neelan stepped off the elevator at the nine-
tieth floor, and was admitted immediately to
the office of the executive professor. The man
stood up graciously from behind his desk, and,
leaning over, shook hands. He said then:

“It is regrettable that we have been un-
able to assist you directly. Unfortunately,
your brother’s last communication to our Lake-
side branch dealt with an obscure nervous
disorder that proved to have no relation to
our sensory investigations. That was five
years ago.”

Neelan said: “Thank you for your efforts
on my behalf.”

Quite suddenly, puzzlement came. It
hadn’t struck him before, but abruptly it

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

12

seemed odd that he had been invited up here
for a few polite words of regret. He stared
sharply at the man, and was startled to see
that the other was regarding him intently from
under bushy eyebrows.

The old man caught his glance, and laughed
shortly. “I’m wondering,” he said finally,
coolly, “if you’re still as reliable as you were
when you passed from out of our responsibility
ten years ago.”

Excitement touched Neelan. For here was
— something.

“I would like,” the scientist went on, before
Neelan could speak, “to make a suggestion,
in the strictest confidence, as a friendly ges-
ture to one of our former wards.”

Neelan fought tautness, as he said: “You
can trust me; I swear it.”

He waited tensely, as the old man’s fine,
gray eyes burned into his own, steadily, for
a long moment. At last —

“Why don’t you,” said Professor Rayburn,
“try the W'eapon Shops? It is not generally
known, but they have an Information Center
that has no equal. And now good-by and
good luck.”

He turned away, without looking at Neelan,
and busied himself with papers on a side desk.

Neelan’s mind was still jumping as he
reached the street. Because he hadn’t known.
He thought: “And I believed they only sold
guns. I should have known. Why, I’ve been
all over the solar system, been in several of
their shops, had long conversations with that
fellow on Europa — ”

He felt tom; his personal despair yielded
briefly to a sense of immense things, the utter
tremendousness of the Weapon Makers es-
tablishment, with its stores existing in tens
of thousands of cities and towns in the far-
flung Isher Empire, an independent, outlawed,
indestructible, altruistic opposition to tyranny.

He should have known, of course, that they
must have an inner, hidden establishment that
served the outer, visible one. Thinking about
it, he had a sense of lift; the burden of his
search seemed less of a weight on his soul.

The Weapon Shop was in a glade of green
and floral vegetation; it made a restful, idyllic
picture between two giant buildings. The
great, universal sign of the store told its old,
old story to all who cared to see:

THE RIGHT TO BUY WEAPONS IS THE
RIGHT TO BE FREE

The window sign was the same, too, as in all
the shops he had seen. The letters were
smaller, but the words were just as positive:

THE FINEST ENERGY WEAPONS IN THE
KNOWN UNIVERSE

Neelan stood very still, staring at the gleam-
ing display of revolvers and rifles. It wasn’t
that there was anything new here. For years
he had carried one of those marvelous, defen-
sive guns. The weapon was in place now,
fitted snugly in its holster under his left shoul-
der.

Seven times, in the days when he had lived
by his remarkable gambling luck, that super-
gun had flashed its abnormal power. No, defi-
nitely it wasn’t the newness. The only thing
was —

The very sight of a Weapon Shop always
gave him an eerie sensation. It required a
distinct mental reaching to realize that every
Weapon Shop was an impregnable fort, and
that bloodily earnest attempts had been made
by the Isher government in long-gone years
to smash the entire organization — unreal pic-
ture, amazingly hard to visualize.

Neelan shook himself, and walked toward
the door. It wouldn’t open. He tugged at it,
startled, thinking: Was it possible that the
sensitive door was condemning him because
he had so recently come from a government
institute? Report said the door worked by
thought; and no enemy of the Weapon Shops,
no servant of the Empress Isher, was ever
admitted. It—

It opened gently like a flower unfolding its
petals, only faster. It was weightless in his
fingers, like some supernally delicate struc-
ture insubstantial. And when he stepped
through the opening, it crowded his heels
without touching them, and closed behind him
silent as a night in space.

Neelan stepped gingerly through a little al-
cove into a large room. Dimly lighted region
it was, with wall and floor showcases, not
many, but neatly arranged.

A tall, middle-aged attendant emerged after
a moment from behind double doors that led
to a briefly seen, brilliantly lighted back room.

Neelan explained his mission. The man
went to a metal desk that stood against the
back wall, and seated himself before an “end-
less” sheet of paper. The paper came out of
the wall, and then went down a slit into the

13

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

The building is owned by a famous scientist,
named Derd Kershaw, a great and thoroughly
honest man. It is, and remains, our policy
never to pry deeply into the affairs of such
personages. For this reason, at the time, the
bare details of your brother’s residence were
noted, and that was all. However — ”

He paused; then: “In view of the fact that
your brother is now dead, it has been decided
to go further into the matter. Unfortunately,
it will be at least a week before an observer
can be assigned to the task. I would advise
that you take no personal action in the mean-
time, as our investigation will be immeasurably
more thorough than anything you could pos-
sibly manage.”

His eyes were steady on Neelan’s. “I must
emphasize that we are not taking your case
in any police sense of the word. We do not
punish crimes. We do not interfere with the
great flow of Isher life, except under certain
conditions where money is involved.”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 14

desk over a roller. The man wrote Gil’s full
name, and connecting information.

The paper with the writing rolled out of
sight into the desk. They waited.

Five minutes passed, then the paper rolled
back out of the desk. There was more writ-
ing below the original. The attendant studied
the message with pursed lips, then he looked
up and said:

“Take down this address: 1997 232nd Ave-
nue, Center, Imperial City.”

Neelan’s fingers trembled as he wrote. His
mind was twisting. His body felt like liquid.
He said in a wavering voice:

“You don’t mean to tell me that you’ve ac-
tually got his last address? What kind of
wizards are you? What — ”

He couldn’t go on; he listened as in a dream,
as the man went on:

“There are some unusual angles in the case.
When your brother came to Imperial City,
he went to live and to work at that address.

He finished: “Come back in eight days, and
we will give you further information. That
is all. Good-by.”

Neelan was out in the street before it oc-
curred to him that he hadn’t so much as offered
a single word of thanks.

Night was falling over the city of dreams
when Neelan stepped off the public carplane
in front of Mrs. Dendley’s. A night made
alive by lights that glowed softly from every
crevice, and only the sky, the deepening blue
of the sky was yielded to darkness.

He stood watching the lights of the car-
plane flicker into the upper shadows, then he
turned and went into the house.

In his room, the high thrill of his success
began to fade before a new reality: So he
knew where Gil had worked up to the time
of his death! So what?

He knew where a man now dead had worked!

It was startling to picture it that way. He
thought: “Am I crazy? What am I looking
for? Just because Gil and I were like two
facets of the same form, why should I ruin
myself simply to find his body? He’s dead.
Irrevocably. I’ve got to get that deep into
my head.”

The thought disturbed vastly. He felt, sud-
denly, the immeasurable unimportance of one
life, one man dying somewhere, darkly, his
body silhouetted for a cosmic instant against
the horizon of time, and then plunging down
into the night, another brave spirit lost among
the hosts of Earth’s dead.

Unsettled, he walked to the window. The
house stood on a great rise; and so it was pos-
sible to see across the ocean of buildings to
the distant sea of lights that was the “down-
town,” with its Avenue of Luck, Boulevard of
Fun, and Street of Shows.

Far to the right, he could just make out the
Imperial Palace. For weeks of nights, the daz-
zling, crystalline structure had scarcely more
than touched his attention. Now, suddenly,
it caught his mind and his eyes.

The empress! Mentally, he pictured her:
imperious young woman in the full fire of her
power and youth. The glorious Empress In-
nelda Isher, not an angel from what he had
privately heard but —

Whatever she was, she was the epitome of
the lusty life that was out there under the
six hundred square miles of blazing lights that
was Imperial City, while he —

He was sunk here in the contemplation of
death.

Slowly, Neelan straightened. It was over,
he thought — his search. Tomorrow, he would
obtain his job. During the noon hour, he
would take a ride over to the address the
Weapon Shop had given him and, well, look
the place over.

He wouldn’t go in, but would wait the eight
days that the Weapon Shop man had sug-
gested, wait for their report.

He went to bed on that thought and
dreamed that Gil was alive on a burning hell
of a desert, choking, suffocating, in a perpetual
blast of unearthly storms.

He wakened, sweating; and saw that a cheer-
ful sun was shining through the great window.
Slowly, under the effects of an invigorating
shower and the brightness of the morning, his
body relaxed. Mentally, he renewed his de-
terminations of the night before.

It was cool outside, almost bracing on the
shaded side of the long, broad boulevard.
Neelan crossed to the sunny side, and that
made a difference.

The thought came that the sidewalk mecha-
nism had been reversed too quickly. There
was, of course, the fact that the more day’s
heat the streets absorbed, the more light they
gave off at night, but after all the light was
always augmented by atomic power, so —

Walking warmed him gradually, and he for-
got the problem of temperature completely,
as a vast, hundred-story building loomed up
ahead of him.

TRELLIS MAJOR BUILDING

For a moment, the wrongness of the name
did not strike Neelan. He quickened his pace,
and stopped only when, across the street from
the stupendous structure, he saw the smaller,
fifty-story, spired monster that was the Trellis
Minor Building.

The sight jarred his memory. Of course.
Trellis Major and Minor were two meteorites
revolving around each other somewhere be-
yond Mars. The larger was terrene matter,
the smaller contraterrene. They were being
mined assiduously by a single company; and
these massive buildings were but two by-
products of the still unended treasure that
flowed in a steady stream from that remote
region of solar space.

Some day Carew and he might have a build-

15 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

ing, or buildings, like this for that three-mile-
in-diameter meteorite of theirs.

The mental picture was pleasing; and it oc-
cupied his mind so completely that he was
stepping into the elevator before another
thought struck him:

Funny, an atomic motor repair company in
a building. The law was utterly strict about
isolating the power tools involved — requiring
a special type of wall and floor material, and
at least fifty feet of fenced-in ground on all
sides. Impossible here!

Obviously, then, this must be only an office;
his actual working hours would be spent else-
where. He knocked thoughtfully on the door
of Room 1874 — and waited.

Two minutes of intermittent knocking pro-
duced no results; and, frowning, Neelan
stepped back and surveyed the impassive,
opaque entrance. It was one of a long line of
similar doors on the eighteenth floor, and he’d
be hanged if he’d give up without a further
effort. Before he could knock again, a harsh
voice from inside said:

“Come in.”

Neelan’s fingers were turning the knob, and
he was pushing the door open, before he re-
membered that the door had been locked when
he had first tried it.

So the lock was remotely controlled —

Just inside the door, he stopped short. He
was in a large room with a massive bulging
window. There was no other door, no other
room. A telestat stood blank and lifeless in
one corner. There were four chairs and a desk
and — nothing else.

There was no one in the room.

Like a discharged gun, Neelan’s mind
flashed straight at the only possible source of
the harsh voice that had invited him inside.

Straight at the unlighted telestat in the cor-
ner, he said:

“What’s the idea?”

There was silence. Neelan was fibout to
speak again, when the voice that had invited
him in, snapped from the telestat: “Who are
you? What’s your name?”

Neelan’s impulse was to walk out. The
sharpness of the man’s tone jarred on him.
The whole affair seemed suddenly decidedly
fishy and —

The only thing was: his urgent need for
money. Damn it, he couldn’t just walk out.
He laughed ruefully, gave his name in his
steadiest voice.

“What do you want? How did you come
here? How did you find this place?”

The first real impatience touched Neelan.
What kind of an idiot was* he dealing with?
But again his own urgencies held his tone to
a quiet level, as he explained about the ad,
his qualifications for the job, and the length
of time he was willing to work.

He did not mention Gil, or any of his rea-
sons for being on Earth. When he had fin-
ished, there was a long silence; finally:

“I guess you’ll do.”

“Thanks,” said Neelan dryly.

“You must,” said the voice from the tele-
stat, “be wondering the why of this queer
method of employment.”

Neelan shrugged. “I did. But I don’t really
give a damn.”

The man laughed, not too pleasantly. “I’m
glad to hear that. I’ve got a job that will
take just about two months; and I’ll pay you
a hundred credits a week, and no questions
asked. How’s that?”

Fishier and fishier, Neelan thought. Even
with hand craftsmen as scarce as they were,
that was about double what the job was worth.
He shrugged, and said:

“I’ll be too busy repairing motors to worry
much about anything else.”

He felt remote from the petty illegality that
seemed to lie behind this. Remote, and con-
scious of his own need. He grew aware that
the stranger had been speaking, and that he
hadn’t been listening. The man was saying:
“ — So come up at once. I’ll show you the
general layout before lunch. All right?”
Neelan said: “Will you repeat the address
while I write it down?”

The voice rasped: “Five blocks north along
131st Street. Then about one block east to
1997 232nd Avenue, Center. It’s a tall, nar-
row, grayish building. You can’t miss it.
Ring the bell, and wait for an answer. Got
that?”

There was something in the back of Neelan’s
mind, an indistinct something that tugged for
his attention but faded as he realized that the
man was waiting for an answer. Neelan
looked up impatiently:

“Yes,” he said, “yes. I’ll be there.”

He was out in the street before the some-
thing in the back of his mind came out of its
dark.

He stopped. His mind jangled. And then
he had his note book out and was feverishly

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

16

leafing it over to the address the Weapon
Shop had given him.

For a moment, then, it seemed to him that
there was a fatal flaw in the physical struc-
ture of his brain; and that flaw was now crack-
ing under pressure.

Because the two addresses — the one where
he was going, and the one where Gil had
worked before his death — were the same.

He couldn’t get over it. The shock con-
tinued to beat at him, as he walked. And it
did not fade, but grew. After two blocks,
Neelan leaned, trembling, against a building.

He was so weak that he felt sick. He was
about to force himself on when another
thought swept him with the violence of a tidal
wave.

The man had recognized him. Or rather
recognized his resemblance to Gil. That was
why his voice had been so unnaturally sharp.
That was why he had been silent for such
long intervals. He must have been thinking
of what might lie behind the appearance of
Gil’s brother, applying for a job whose origin
had been so skillfully concealed.

He must have been nearly startled out of
his wits. And that meant —

Neelan’s mind simply would not reach out
to grasp the implications. For over and above
everything else was the fact that the stranger
had recovered a semblance of reason and asked
him to come up. Urged him.

The grisly sense of danger that came in that
moment was like a physical blow. Quite lit-
erally. he braced himself; all his muscles tight-
ened like drawn wires.

“Am I going up there,” he thought shakily,
“without telling anyone where I’m going? It’s
true, I’ve got a remarkable defensive gun
but — ” x.

There was the further fact that the man
might become suspicious if he didn’t arrive
within a certain time. Nevertheless, one di-
gression shouldn’t —

Swiftly, he walked to the nearest carplane
stop, and pressed the button. A machine
swooped down out of the sky.

The Weapon Shop door opened at his touch,
without offering an instant’s resistance. The
attendant came forward, recognition in his
gaze. He listened thoughtfully while Neelan
explained what had happened. Finally,
gravely, he shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “that you failed to ap-
preciate what I told you before: The Weapon

Shops do not interfere in the affairs of indi-
viduals, except under certain circumstances
that do not apply here.

“Overwhelmingly, our business is that of
selling guns to men who have the will and
courage to protect themselves and their rights
against tyranny. In the final issue, it is the
maintenance of that spirit of resistance that
is our concern during any given generation or
century.

“My advice is: wait until one of our ob-
servers can be assigned to the case. Unfortu-
nately, all our available men are engaged upon
a task of the utmost importance, and under
no circumstances can they be shifted. I can
see the importance of what has happened. The
man who talked to you does not sound like
Kershaw but” — he shrugged — “I’m sorry.’

To hell with the Weapon Shops, Neelan
thought grimly, as he sat in a carplane on his
return journey. Seven more days before one
of their men would be free; and even then, no
matter what they discovered, they wouldn’t
take any action. Such cosmic detachment
might have a long-run practical value, but it
didn’t mean a thing now.

And there was no time for further delays;
his strength lay in the fact that the man, who-
ever he was, did want a job done. Still —

Frowning, Neelan climbed off the carplane
within a block of his destination. There was
a store across the street; he went in, bought
an envelope and a sheet of paper, and wrote
a brief note to Professor Nad Rayburn^, The
note stated the facts as simply as possible,
and ended: “If you fail to hear from me by

tomorrow noon, get in touch with the police.”

He mailed the letter; and then, satisfied,
he headed along the street. It was, he saw
by his watch, exactly thirty-one minutes since
he had talked to his — employer. Not too long.

So that was the building! Neelan stopped,
and stared. It was a queer, ungainly struc-
ture in that it was out of proportion, much
too long for its width. Like a great, gray-dull
needle it poked into the lowering sky three,
four hundred feet, a curiously sinister con-
struction.

There was no sign outside it to indicate
what went on inside, simply a narrow walk
leading from the sidewalk to a single, unim-
posing door that was level with the street.

He pictured Gil walking along this street
on the day of his death, striding forward up
to the door, disappearing inside. The thought

17 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

stiffened Neelan as he rang the doorbell.

A moment passed; then: “You took your
time about arriving,” said the familiar voice
from a hidden speaker above the door.

Neelan said steadily: “I walked straight
here.”

There was another brief silence. Neelan
thought: The man must be thinking that over,
mentally measuring the .distance from the
Trellis Minor Building. Finally:

“Just a minute.”

The door began to open. Neelan saw a wide,
high alcove, just how high he couldn’t make
out from where he was standing. He forgot
the alcove as he found himself staring at a
thick, partly open door made of dark, mottled
metal. The entire inner wall, in which the
big door was set, was smoothly wrought in the
same metal.

Neelan was stepping through the outer door
when it struck him with a horrible start what
the over-all, unnatural effect was.

The inner wall was Fursching steel, the
structural alloy that was used almost exclu-
sively for the superhard shells of spaceships.

The strange building was a hangar for a
spaceship. And the ship was in.

The shock of the discovery smashed along
every nerve of Neelan’s body. He drew back
like a man who has unsuspectingly picked up
an innocent-looking rod, only to find that it
was a white-hot, hellish thing.

“What’s the matter?” said the harsh voice.
“What are you waiting for?”

The words stirred Neelan. He tried to force
himself to walk in. And couldn’t. He stood
there, his brain feeling too big for his head
with the thought that was swelling in it.

Gil had died, not on Earth, but in a flight
through space. It was —

The reality of what the man had said struck
him again, more sharply this time. It brought
the piercing realization that his hesitation was
ruining him. The time for dissembling was
already long past. Only the truth could be-
gin to explain why he was standing here like
a clod of wood. He found his voice:

“I’ve just discovered that this is a space-
ship.”

“Oh!” There was silence; then the voice
said urgently: “Just a minute. I’ll be right
out. I’ll prove to" you that everything is all
right.”

The annoying thing to Neelan was that he
didn’t suspect. Not that it would have made
any difference. He was going in, regardless.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION ]

But — to stand there, feeling in partial control
of the situation with his Weapon Shop re-
volver snugly ready in its holster; and then —

The inner door, that had been fractionally
open, swung wide. It revealed a third door,
which was also open, and, beyond that, float-
ing in the air, was a mobile energy gun,
mounted and riding easily on antigravity
plates.

The three-noded muzzle of the gun pointed
with a mechanical steadiness at Neelan. From
an inner speaker, the man said in a tight, hard
voice:

“With your experience on the planets, you
probably carry a Weapon Shop gun. I hope
you realize the futility of such a weapon
against a ninety-thousand-cycle unit. Just
toss your revolver through the door.”

There was nothing else to do. And it was
as the revolver struck the floor inside that
a tall man came into view. He scooped up
the viridescent little instrument, and then
faced Neelan from behind the mobile unit.

“Come on,” he said curtly.

Without a word, Neelan stepped through
the two inner doors, each one of which, in turn,
clanged behind him with heavy finality.

in.

Almost, Hedrock forgot the spy ray. It
glowed on, the picture on the screen showing
the Imperial conference room as cleverly as
ever.

There were still men bowing low over the
hand of the cold-faced young woman who sat
on the throne chair, and the sound of their
voices came distinctly. Everything was as it
should be except —

For Hedrock, all interest in that splendid,
shining room, that courtly scene, had shud-
dered into nonexistence. The icy words of
the young woman spun around and around
in his mind, though minutes had now passed
since she had spoken them.

“ — Under the circumstances,” she had said,
“we cannot afford to take further risks with
this Weapon Shop turncoat. What has hap-
pened is too important. Accordingly, General
Grail, you will, as a purely precautionary meas-
ure, arrest Captain Hedrock an hour after
lunch and hang him. The time sequence is
important as he will, as usual, sit at my table
during lunch, and also because I wish to be
present at the execution.”

“Very well, your majesty — ”

Hedrock paced back and forth in front of
his viewing machine. He felt mentally and
physically shattered, indecisive; and there was
the clammy beginning of fear, for a thought,
a grim purpose was in his mind, a hardening
determination not to accept the failure that
was here.

Very slowly, he faced again the spy-ray ma-
chine, which, in its present materialized form,
occupied an entire corner of the apartment.

He saw, with a somber awareness, that the
young woman was still in the conference room,
alone now. She sat, a fai..t smile on her long
face. The smile faded as she touched an in-
strument on her chair, and began to dictate
in a clear, bell-like voice.

For a moment, Hedrock allowed the mean-
ing of the routine palace matters she was dis-
cussing to penetrate his mind; then he with-
drew his attention, and, very carefully, began
to adjust his machine. The scene showing
the young empress faded. The viewing plate
flickered with formless light, finally caught
the face of a man, and steadied.

Hedrock said: “Calling the High Council
of the Weapon Makers/’

“It will take a minute,” said the man on
the screen, gravely, “to bring the various coun-
cilors to their locals.”

Hedrock nodded stiffly. He was suddenly
jumpy, cold. His voice had been steady
enough, but he had the feeling that it would
deteriorate into a quaver unless he could pull
himself together.

He stood very still, fighting that shakiness.
When he looked again on the screen, a dozen
faces had replaced the one, enough members
for a quorum. He began at once an account
of the sentence of death that had been pro-
nounced on him, finished finally:

“There is no doubt that something big is
up. Time and again during the last two weeks,
when an Imperial conference has been called,
I have found myself headed off into tedious
conversations with superior officers, prevented
from returning to my rooms.

“To my mind, however, the personally sig-
nificant factor of the hanging order is the time
element involved. Note that I am not to be
arrested until an hour after lunch, that is,
about three hours from now. And then too,
I was allowed to return to my rooms in time
to hear the sentence pronounced. If they
know the Weapon Shops, they must realize
that, given three hours of warning, I have am-

ple time to escape. Therefore — •”

“Are you suggesting,” said Councilor Peter
Cadron sharply, “that you are going to re-
main?”

The putting of his unsettled intention into
words startled Hedrock. The cold, stiff feel-
ing came back; and when he spoke again, his
voice shook the faintest bit, though the words
themselves were precise and, in their essence,
confident:

“You will remember, Mr. Cadron, that we
have analyzed the empress’ character. The
abnormal sociotechnical pressures of the age
have made her as restless and as adventure-
minded as are her nineteen billion subjects.
She wants change, excitement, new experi-
ences, but —

“But above everything else she is the Im-
perial power, representative of all the con-
servative, antichange forces. The result is
a constant tug of mind, a dangerous state of
unbalance, which makes her the most difficult
enemy the Weapon Shops have ever had.”

“The hanging, no doubt,” said another man
coldly, “will supply a fillip to her jaded nerves;
for the few moments that you jerk and bounce
in the noose, her life will seem less drab.”

“What I had in mind,” Hedrock said
steadily, “was that one of our No-men might
resolve the various factors, and advise on the
practicability of my remaining.”

“We will consult Edward Gonish,” said
Peter Cadron. “Now please have patience
while we discuss this matter in camera.”

They withdrew, not visually, for their faces
remained on the viewer. But, though their
lips moved, no voice came through.

The conversation seemed to go on for a very
long time; and there was an almost endless
period when something was being explained to
somebody not on the screen. The time grew
so long that Hedrock stood finally with
clenched teeth and clenched hands, his muscles
working, face contorted. His breath exploded
from his lungs with a whistling gasp when,
abruptly, silence ended, and Peter Cadron
said:

“We must regretfully report that the No-
man Edward Gonish considers that there are
not sufficient known factors for him to offer
an intuition. This leaves us with only logic,
and so we wish to ask one question: At what
time will your present chances of escaping
from the palace begin to deteriorate sharply?
Can you possibly stay for lunch?”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Hedrock held himself preternaturally steady,
letting the shock of the report of the No-
man’s verdict drain out of him. Not for a
moment had he realized how tremendously
he was depending on that superbly trained
intuitive genius to decide on his life or —
death. In a single, flashing instant, the whole
situation had become utterly uncertain, dan-
gerous beyond his previous conception.

He shook himself, said at last: “No, if I
stay to lunch I’m committed. The empress
likes to play cat and mouse, and she will defi-
nitely inform me of the sentence during the
meal. I have a plan, dependent on her emo-
tional reactions and based on the fact that
she will consider it necessary to justify her-
self.”

He paused, frowning, stared at the screen:
“What were the conclusions of your discus-
sion? I need every possible assistance.”

It was Councilor Kendlon, a thick-faced
man, who had hitherto not spoken, who be-
gan:

“As you know, you are in the palace for
two purposes, one being to protect the Weapon
Shops from a recurrence of anything approach-
ing the desperate danger we were placed in
seven years ago when only the sacrifice of a
man from the twentieth century, seven thou-
sand years ago, enabled us to save ourselves
from destruction.

“Your other purpose is, of course, your own
pet scheme of establishing a liaison between
the Weapon Shops and the Imperial govern-
ment.

“You are a spy, therefore, only in a minor
sense. Any lesser information you may gain
is yours alone. We do not want it. But think
back in your mind: Have you heard any-
thing— anything — that might provide some
fulcrum for your theory that something tre-
mendous is being planned?”

Hedrock shook his head slowly, wordlessly,
Quite suddenly, he felt no emotion, a sense of
being physically detached. His voice came
finally as out of a remote, cold region, precise,
even, conclusive:

“I can see, sirs, that you have come to no
decision, and you cannot even begin to deny
that you are reluctant to have my connection
here broken. And there is no doubt at all of
your anxiety to learn what the empress is
concealing. Finally, of course, there is, as you
say, my pet scheme.

“Accordingly, I have decided to remain — ”

They were not so quick as that to agree.
The strange, restless character of the empress
made it possible that the slightest wrong word
on his part would be fatal. Details — details
— they discussed them with a painstaking thor-
oughness.

There was the fact that he was the first
apparent traitor to the Weapon Shops in his-
tory, one who nevertheless refused to give
so much as a scrap of information to the curi-
ous ruler. His striking appearance, mental
brilliance and strong personality had already
fascinated her, should continue to do so.

Therefore, except for the dangerous fact
that she was engaged in something secret and
important, the threat of hanging was a test,
product of suspicion. But be careful; if nec-
essary, give her secret Weapon Shop informa-
tion of a general nature, to titillate her appe-
tite for more and —

At that point, the door buzzer broke off
the conversation with all the finality of an
explosion. With a start, Hedrock flicked off
the controls, shut off the power; and then,
acutely conscious that he had allowed him-
self to become jumpy, he deliberately removed
his tie pin from the cravat, and bent down
over the table.

The ring lay there, a small, bright design,
its ornamental head an exact duplicate in
miniature of the spy-ray machine, the image
of which was built up into solid form by the
atomic forces manufactured by the perfect
power plant inside the ring.

Quite simply, he knew that it would be
quicker to release the tiny, automatic lever
that was attached to the ring for that very
purpose, but his own nervous condition was
more important. If he could steel himself
to this —

It was as delicate a job as threading a
needle. Three times his hand trembled the
slightest bit, and missed the almost invisible
depression that had to be contacted. The
fourth time he got it. The spy-ray machine
winked out like a smashed light, only there
was no debris, nothing but empty air. Where
it had stood on the corner table was only the
blanket he had used to protect the gleaming
table top from scratches.

Hedrock whisked the blanket back to the
bedroom, and then stood for a moment with
the ring in his palm, undecided. He put it
finally in a metal box with three other rings,
and set the controls of the box to dissolve
the rings if there was any tampering.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

20

Only the ring gun remained encircled on his
finger when at last he walked coolly to answer
the insistent buzzer.

Hedrock recognized the tall man who stood
in the corridor as one of the empress’ order-
lies; the fellow nodded recognition, and said:

“Captain, her majesty asks me to inform
you that lunch is being served, and would you
please come at once.”

For a blank moment, Hedrock had the dis-
tinct impression that he was the object of a
practical joke, and that the abnormal woman
was already playing her little thrill game.
Lunch time! Why, it wasn’t even —

The thought ended, as, automatically, he
jerked up his hand, and stared at his wrist
watch. The little dials showed twelve thirty-
five, and that was like a special mind explo-
sion. Incredibly, a solid hour had passed
since he had heard the grimly uttered sentence
of death from the empress’ firm, finely shaped
mouth.

With an enormous effort, Hedrock con-
trolled his rising dismay, fought the sick, un-
pleasant feeling that time had stolen a march
on him.

Actually, the question of whether or not he
remained till lunch had never been his to de-
cide. The event was rushing upon him even
as he was telling the council that it was an
hour away.

The reality of his position beeame ulti-
mately clear as he walked along past scores
of soldiers who stood in every corridor on his
way to the royal dining salon; and that reality
was that he was — staying.

It was so final that Hedrock stopped on the
threshold of the great, brilliant room, stood for
a moment, smiling sardonically — and was him-
self.

Quietly, still smiling faintly, he wended his
way among the tables of noisy courtiers, and
sank into his place five chairs down from the
empress at the head table.

IV.

The cocktail and soup courses were already
past. Hedrock sat, more pensive now that
he was not physically on the move, waiting
for whatever was next. He studied the men
around the table, those young, strong, arro-
gant, intelligent thirty-year-olds who made up
the personal following of her imperial majesty.

He felt a pang, sharp, almost cruel. He had
enjoyed his six months among this brilliant

gathering. It was a change after the years
of the quiet sanity of his Weapon Shop friends.
There was something about young people tast-
ing the fruits of stupendous power, a wild, un-
tamed enjoyment of joy that was reminiscent
of the old, old days except —

Hedrock smiled wryly. The difference was
that coming here had been the most danger-
ous situation he had committed himself to in
all his long years.

He had known, of course, that he would
sooner or later involve himself beyond even
his secret powers. There was a quality about
immortality that he had not allowed for —
in the beginning — a developing disregard of
risks until the crisis was actually upon him, a
pre-danger casualness about the danger. Now
as in the past, only his over-all purpose, as
distinct from the purposes that people thought
he had, was important. He —

The empress’ voice, sugar-sweet, rising for
the first time above the soft clamor of con-
versation, cut off his reverie:

“You seem very thoughtful. Captain Hed-
rock.”

Hedrock turned his head slowly to face her.

He had been wanting to give her more than
the cursory glance he had allowed himself so
far; but there were angles to that, such as
the fact that her green eyes had been glowing
at him from the moment he had seated him-
self.

It was a strong, a striking, almost a noble
countenance. It had the high-cheeked, firm-
chinned facial structure of the famous Isher
family; and there was no doubt, no doubt at
all that here was only the latest, not the last
member of a star human line.

Willful passions and power unlimited had
twisted that perfect face. But already it was
apparent that the erratic, brilliant Innelda,
like all the remarkable men and women who
were her ancestors, would endure through cor-
ruption and intrigue, in spite of character de-
fects — and carry on the extraordinary, the
great imperial strain of Isher.

The important thing now, Hedrock thought
with a sharpening alertness, was to get her out
into the open under the most advantageous —
for him — circumstances. He said:

“I was thinking, Innelda, of your grand-
mother seven times removed, the lovely, glori-
ous Ganeel, the golden-haired empress. Except
for your brown hair, you’re very like her as
she was in her younger days.”

The green eyes looked puzzled. The em-

l ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

press pursed her lips, and then parted them
as if to say something. Before she could speak,
Hedrock went on:

“The Weapon Shops of course have an en-
tire pictorial of her life. What I. was think-
ing of was the rather sad idea that some day
you, too, would be but a pictorial record in
some dusty Information Center.”

It struck deep. He had known that this
vibrantly alive young woman could not bear
the thought of old age or death in connection
with herself. Dark anger brought a gleam
to her eyes, and produced as always it had
in the past what she was really thinking.

“You at least,” she snapped in a brittle yet
ringing voice, “will never live to see any pic-
torial of my life. You may be interested to
know, my dear captain, that your spy work
here has been found out, and you are to be
hanged this afternoon.”

Astoundingly, the words shocked him to his
core. It was all very well to theorize in ad-
vance that here was nothing but a cunning,
murderous test, a determined attempt to draw
him out. But sitting here within speaking
distance of a flesh and blood tyrant, this crea-
ture whose every whim was law, and who
could be as cruel as death itself — sitting here,
all theory seemed weak, unreal, fantastic.

Abruptly, it was incredible that he could
ever have been so mad as to place himself
in such a predicament. He could so easily
have waited another generation, or two, or
more, for a woman to turn up again in the
Isher line. True this was the logical point,
both biologically and historically but —

By sheer will power, Hedrock fought oS
that black mood. He forced himself, then, to
relax, to smile finally, grimly.

After all, he had fished that answer out of
her, clearly before she really wanted to an-
nounce the sentence. In a grisly sort of way,
it Was a psychological victory. Only —

A few more victories like that; and he’d be
all set for a nervous breakdown.

There was still conversation going on in
the great salon, but not at the royal table;
and it was that that brought Hedrock back
to full awareness of his environment. Some
of the young men were sitting staring at the
empress. Others looked at Hedrock, then at
the empress, then back again.

All were transparently puzzled; they seemed
uncertain as to whether it was a bad joke or
— Hedrock recognized their expression — or one

of those damnable real-life dramas that the
empress precipitated from time to time, seem-
ingly for the sole purpose of ruining every-
body’s digestion.

The important thing, Hedrock thought
tightly, was that the situation now had the
full attention of the men whom he expected to
save his life.

It was the empress' who broke the silence
that lay like a weight over the table; she said
softly, tauntingly:

“A penny for your latest thoughts, captain.”
She couldn’t have put it better. Hedrock
suppressed a savage smile, and said:

“My earlier statement still holds. You’re
very like the lovely, temperamental, explosive
Ganeel. The main difference is that she never
slept with a live snake when she was sixteen.”
“What’s this?” said a man. “Innelda sleep-
ing with snakes. Is this intended symboli-
cally or literally? Why, look, she’s blushing.”
It was so. Hedrock’s cool gaze studied the
empress’ scarlet-cheeked confusion with
amazed curiosity. He had not for a single
second expected to get such a rise out of her.

His eyes narrowed. In a moment, of course,
there would be a veritable flood of bad tem-
per. It wouldn’t bother most of the bold men
present, who had, each in his own way, found
that middle path between yes-man and indi-
vidual that the fiery young woman demanded
of all her personal followers.

“Come, come, Hedrock,” said the mus-
tachioed Prince del Curtin, “you’re not going
to keep this splendid little titbit to yourself.
I suppose this also is derived from the pic-
torial files of the Weapon Shops.”

Hedrock was silent. His smile of acknowl-
edgment seemed to be directed at the prince-
cousin of the empress, but actually he scarcely
saw the man. His gaze, his whole attention,
was concentrated on the only person in the
room who mattered.

The Empress Isher sat, the flush on her
face slowly yielding to anger. She climbed
to her feet, a dangerous glint in her eyes, but
her voice had only a fraction of the fury in it
that he had hoped for. She said grimly:

“That was very clever of you, Captain Hed-
rock, to twist the conversation the way you
did. But I assure you it won’t do the slight-
est bit of good. The very fact that you were
so swift in your response confirms that you
were aware in advance of my intention. You’re

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 22

a spy, and we’re taking no more chances with
you.”

“Oh, come now, Innelda,” said a man.
“You’re not going to pull a miserable stunt
like that.”

“You watch out, mister,” the woman flared
in abrupt violence of temper, “or you’ll join
him on the scaffold.”

The men at the table exchanged significant
glances. Some of them shook their heads dis-
approvingly, and then, all of them fell to
talking among themselves, completely ignor-
ing the empress.

Hedrock waited, his muscles like the taut
strings of a violin. This was what he had
been working for, but now that it was here,
it seemed totally inadequate. In the past,
ostracism by the men whose companionship
she valued had a great emotional effect on the
ruler. Twice, since his arrival he had seen it
influence her decisively.

But not this time. The realization pene-
trated to Hedrock with utter finality, as he
watched the woman sink back into her chair,
and sit there, her long, handsome face twisted
satirically. Her smile faded. She said
gravely:

“I’m sorry, gentlemen, that you feel as you
do. I regret any outburst which would seem
to indicate that my decision against Captain
Hedrock was a personal one. But I have been
greatly upset by my discovery that he is noth-
ing but a spy.”

It was impressive; it had a convincing ring
to it; and the men’s private conversations,
which had died while she was speaking, did
not resume.

Hedrock leaned back in his chair, his sense
of defeat stronger with each passing second.
Quite clearly, whatever was behind the exe-
cution was too big, too important, for mere
cleverness to overbalance.

Drastic, dangerous, deadly action was in
order.

For a while, then, he was intent on his own
thought. The glittering table with its net-
work of cloth coverings, its gleaming dishes,
its two dozen fine-looking young men, yielded
before that intensity, became a background
to his ever grimmer purpose.

Words, he thought, that would change the
whole design of the situation, plus action that
would clinch it, and fast.

He grew aware that Prince del Curtin had
been speaking for some moments:

“ — You can’t just make a statement that
a man is a spy, and expect us to believe it.
We know you’re the biggest and best liar
this side of creation when it suits you. So
how about a little fact.”

Hedrock was conscious of impatience. Ac-

33

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

tually, the men had already failed, had al-
ready accepted the sentence, though they
didn’t seem to realize it. The quicker they
were cut out of the conversation the better.

But careful now, careful. Wait till the em-
press had committed herself, regardless of how
well she did it. She was, he saw, sitting stiffly,
her expression grave, unsmiling. She said
quietly:

“I’m afraid I shall have to ask you all to
trust me. A very serious situation has arisen;
it was the sole subject of our council meeting
today, and I assure you the decision to exe-
cute Captain Hedrock was unanimous, and I
am personally distressed by the necessity.”

Hedrock said: “I really thought better of
your intelligence than this, Innelda. Are you
planning another of your futile forays against
the Weapon Shops, and you think that I might
find out about it, and report it all to the
Weapon Shop council?”

Her green eyes blazed at him. Her voice
was like chipped steel, as she snapped:

“I shall say nothing that will give you a
single clue. I don’t know just what kind of
a system of communications you have with
your superiors, but I know that one exists.
My physicists have frequently registered on
their instruments powerful wave lengths of ex-
tremely high range.”

“Originating in my room?” asked Hedrock
softly.

She stared at him, her lips drawn into an
angry frown. She said reluctantly:

“You would never have dared to come here
if you had had to be as obvious as that. I
will inform you, sir, that I am not interested
in continuing this conversation.”

“Though you did not realize it,” said Hed-
rock in his steadiest tone, “I actually said all
that was necessary to prove my innocence
when I disclosed to you that I knew that, at
the age of sixteen, you slept one whole night
with a live snake.”

“Ah!” said the empress. Her whole body
shook with triumph. “Now, we’re beginning to
get confessions. So you expected to have to
put up a defense, and you prepared that little
speech.”

Hedrock shrugged. “I knew something was
being planned for me. My apartment has
been searched every day for a week. I’ve been
subjected to the most boring sustained mono-
logues by the prize dunderheads in the army
office. Wouldn’t I be a simpleton if I hadn’t
thought of every angle?”

“What I don’t get,” chimed in a young man,
“is the snake business. Why do you think
your knowledge of that proves you not guilty?
That’s too deep for me.”

“Don’t be such an ass, Maddern,” said
Prince del Curtin. “It simply means that the
Weapon Shops knew intimate details of In-
nelda’s palace life long before Captain Hed-
rock ever came. It shows the existence of a
spy system more dangerous than anything we
ever suspected, and the real charge against
Captain Hedrock is his absolute remissness
in not telling us that such a system existed.”

Hedrock was thinking: Not yet, not yet.
Somewhere along here the crisis would come
with a bang, and then his action must be swift,
perfectly timed, decisive. But- — not yet.

Aloud, he said coolly: “Why should you
worry? Three thousand years have proven
that the Weapon Shops have no intention of
overthrowing the Imperial government. I
know for a fact that the spy ray is used with
great discretion, and has never been employed
at night except on the occasion that her
majesty had the snake sneaked in from the
palace zoo. Astounded curiosity made the two
women scientists in charge of the machine on
that occasion continue their watch.

“The story was, of course, too good to keep
in a file; and you may be interested, your
majesty, to know that two psychological ar-
ticles were written about it, one by our great-
est living No-man, Edward Gonish.”

From the corners of his eyes, Hedrock saw
that the slim, lithe body of the woman was
leaning forward; her lips were slightly parted;
her eyes were wide with an intense interest;
her whole being seemed to move according to
his words.

“What,” she half whispered, “did he say
about me?”

With a shock, Hedrock recognized his mo-
ment. Now, he thought, now!

He was trembling. The realization was the
purest pain in his mind. But he couldn’t help
his physical condition, nor did he care. A
man threatened with death was expected to
show agitation, or else he was considered un-
human, cold — and received no sympathy.

His voice rose against the thick pattern of
babble from distant tables, a little wildly, pas-
sionately, but that, too, was goods for a woman
was staring at him with wide eyes, a woman
who was half child, half genius, and who hun-
gered with all her intense emotional nature

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

24

for the strange and the exotic, She sat with
shining eyes, as Hedrock said:

“You must be mad, all of you, or you
wouldn’t make this constant underestimate of
the Weapon Shops and their lineally developed
science.

“What a petty idea it is to imagine that I
have come here as a spy, that I am curious
about some simple little governmental secret.
I am here for one purpose only, and her maj-
esty is perfectly aware of what it is. If she
kills me, she is deliberately destroying her
better, greater self; and if I know anything
about the Isher line, in the final issue they
draw back from suicide.”

The empress was straightening, frowning.
“The presumption of your purpose,” she
snapped, “is only equaled by your cleverness.”
Hedrock couldn’t afford to pay attention to
the interruption, couldn’t dare to give up his
initiative for a single instant. He rushed on:
“To give you some idea of the great scien-
tific attainments of the Weapon Shops, you
will be interested to know that they have an
instrument which can predict the moment of
death of any person.

“Before I came to the palace six months
ago, for my own amusement I secured read-
ings as to the death moments of almost every
person at this table and of the members of
the Imperial Council.”

He had them now; he could see it in the
strained faces that looked at him with a fever-
ish fascination — but still he could not afford
to lose control of the conversation. With an
effort, he forced himself to bow at the white-
faced ruler; then hastily he said:

“I am happy to announce, your majesty,
that you have a long and increasingly honor-
able life ahead of you. Unfortunately — ”
His voice took on a darker tone, as he raced
on: “Unfortunately, there is a gentleman pres-
ent who is destined to die — within minutes.”
He did not wait to see the effects of that,
but turned in his chair, a tigeriskly swift move-
ment — for there was no time to waste; any
second, any instant, his bluff might be called;
and his show end in a ludicrous failure.

His voice bawled across the space that sepa-
rated him from a table, where sat a dozen men
in uniform:

“General Grail!”

“Eh!” The officer who was to carry out the
hanging order whipped around. He looked
startled when he saw who it was.

It struck Hedrock with a special shock that
his bellow had brought complete silence to the
room; people at every table had stopped eat-
ing, stopped their private conversation, and
were watching the royal table and — him.

Abruptly conscious of his greater audience,
Hedrock pushed his voice forward in his
mouth, tightened his diaphragm, and brought
forth the ringing question:

“General Grail, if you were to die this min-
ute, what would be the cause?”

The heavy-faced man two tables away stood
up slowly. “I’m in perfect health,” he growled.
“What the devil are you talking about?”

“Nothing wrong with your heart?” Hedrock
urged,

“Not a thing.”

Hedrock thrust his chair back, and climbed
to his feet. He couldn’t afford errors due to
awkward positions. With a jerk, he raised
his arm and pointed at the general with his
finger, rudely.

“You’re General Lister Grail, are you not?”

“That’s right. And now, Captain Hedrock,
I resent most violently this — ”

Hedrock cut him off: “General, I regret to
announce that, according to the records of the
Weapon Shops, you are due to die at exactly
one fifteen o’clock today from heart failure.
That’s this minute, this — second.”

There was no stopping now. With a single,
synchronized motion, Hedrock bent his fin-
ger, shaped his hand to receive the gun ma-
terialized on an invisible plane by the gun
ring on his finger.

No ordinary, retail-type gun was that un-
seen, wizard’s product, but a special Un-
limited never sold across the counters, never
■displayed, never used except in extreme crises.

It fired instantly on a vibration plane be-
yond human vision; and, as the general’s heart
muscles were caught by the paralyzing force,
Hedrock unclenched his hand; the invisible
gun dematerialized.

In the pandemonium that followed, Hedrock
walked to the throne chair at the head of the
royal table, and bent over the empress. He
could not suppress a tingle of admiration for
she was completely, abnormally calm.

Emotional, erotic woman she might be, but
in actual moments of excitement, during the
hour of vital decision, all the great, basic sta-
bility that was her Isher inheritance came to
the fore.

It was that quality of utter sanity in her that

25

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

lie had appealed to; and here it was, like a
precious jewel, shining at him from the quiet
viridescence of her eyes. She said finally:

“I suppose you realize you have, by impli-
cation, confessed everything by your killing
of General Grail.”

He knew better than to deny anything to
the supernal being she had for that sustained
moment become. He said;

“I was advised of the sentence of death,
and by whom it was to be carried out.”

“Then you admit it?”

“I’ll admit anything that you wish so long
as you understand that I have your best in-
terests at heart.”

She looked incredulous. “A Weapon Shop
man, whose organization fights me at every
turn, talking about my interests.”

“I am not, never have been, never will be,
a Weapon Shop man.” Hedrock spoke de-
liberately.

A startled look came into her face; then:
“I almost believe that. There’s something
strange, and alien, about you, something I
must discover — ”

“Some day, I’ll tell you. I promise.”

“You seem very sure that I shall not have
somebody else hang you.”

“As I said before, the Ishers do not commit
suicide.”

“Now you’re on your old theme, your im-
possible ambition. But never mind that. I’m
going to let you live, but for the time being
you must leave the palace. You can’t fool
me with that talk about an all-purpose spy

ray”

“Can’t I?”

“You may have had such a machine prying
into the palace when I was sixteen, but since
then the whole palace has been fitted with de-
fense screens. Those can be pierced only by
a two-way communication machine. In other
words, there must be a machine inside as well
as out.”

“You’re very clever.”

“As for the pretense,” the woman went on,
“that the Weapon Shops can see into the fu-
ture, let me inform you that we know as
much about time travel, and its impossible
limitations, as the Weapon Shops. The see-
saw principle involved is only too clearly rec-
ognized, with all its ever-fatal end results. But,
again, never mind that.

“I want you to leave for two months. I
may call you back before then, but it all de-
pends on my little enterprise. Meantime, you

may transmit this message to the Weapon
Shop council. What I am doing is not in the
faintest degree harmful to the Weapon Shops.
I swear that on my honor.”

For a long moment, Hedrock gazed at her
steadily. He said at last, softly:

“I am going to make a very profound state-
ment: I haven’t the faintest idea what you
are doing, or going to do, but in your adult
life I have noticed one thing: In all your
major political and economic moves, you are
actuated by conservative impulses.

“Don’t do it. Change is coming; let it
come. Don’t fight it, but lead it, direct it.
Add new laurels of prestige to the famous name
of Isher.”

"Thank you for your adviee,” she said
coldly.

Hedrock bowed, said: “I’ll be knocking at
your door in two months. Good-by.”

The hum of renewed conversation was thick-
ening behind him as he reached the series of
ornate doors on the far side of the room. He
passed through; and then, out of sight, quick-
ened his pace.

He reached the elevators safely, stepped into
one hurriedly, and pressed the express button
for the roof. It was a long trip; and his nerves
grew jumpy.

Any minute, any second, that mood of the
empress would wear off and —

The elevator stopped; the door opened. He
was stepping out before he noticed the body
of men. They came forward at the double
march, and instantly hemmed him in. They
were in plain clothes, but there was no mis-
taking that here were — police.

The next instant one of the men said:

“Captain Hedrock, you are under arrest.”

V.

For Neelan, facing a gun that withdrew side-
ways as he advanced, there was a kaleidoscope
of swift impressions. He saw that he was in
the control room of the spaceship; and the
reality of that held him for a moment, startled.

A control room was, by law, located in the
center of a ship. That meant this hangar ex-
tended about four hundred feet underground,
as well as above.

An eight-hundred-foot spaceship — what an
enormous machine for a private citizen to
own. Somebody had planned — big.

Neelan drew a deep breath. Gil, he thought
shakily, Gil, you tight-mouthed idiot, why

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 26

didn’t you write and tell me? Now, I’ve got
to find out from —

“Well,” the stranger’s voice cut raspingly
across his thought, “what do you think of it?”
Slowly, Neelan turned toward his captor.
He saw a long, pale-faced individual, about
thirty-five years old. The fellow had maneu-
vered the mobile unit toward the ceiling; and
he was in the act of slipping Neelan’s gun into
his coat pocket. In his fingers he held an
Imperial single-noded pistol; and he was re-
garding Neelan with large, brown, suspicious
eyes.

Neelan said swiftly: “For Isher’s sake, put
that gun away. I can see now there’s some-
thing damn funny going on. But I still need
the job. Does that make sense?”

He had struck, he realized, the right note.
The man relaxed visibly. His gun lowered.
He spoke finally with an attempt at hearti-
ness, that didn’t quite come off:

“Now you’re talking. You can see how it
was. I thought you weren’t going to come
in.”

Neelan said: “The spaceship startled me,
located here in the heart of the city.”

It was a point, it seemed to him, that he
should press even harder: the fact that all
this was new and strange to Gil’s brother
needed stressing to a man who knew their
relationship, who knew that Gil was dead, and
yet who wasn’t saying a word about, his knowl-
edge.

Neelan went on: “So long as we understand
each other, I guess we’ll get along. The hun-
dred credits a week still goes, does it?”

The man nodded. “And it’ll be clear, too,”
he said, “because I’m taking no chances on
you not coming back here.”

Neelan stared. “What do you mean?”

The fellow smiled sardonically. He seemed
to be more pleased with the situation. He
looked surer of himself; his voice sounded cool
and confident, as he said:

"You’re going to live aboard until the job
is done.”

“Oh!”

He was startled, in spite of himself. Not
that having to remain bothered him, although
he ought to make some kind of strong protest
as a matter of principle. The main thing
was —

According to the Weapon Shops, a great
and honest scientist, named Derd Kershaw,
owned this building. If honesty could be

judged by actions, then this long-bodied un-
pleasant young man was not Kershaw.

Was it possible that an accident had occurred
that had killed Kershaw and Gil and the rest
of the staff, leaving one survivor, who was
trying to take personal advantage of the situa-
tion?

Or was the reality even more sinister than
that? Whatever it was, he had to say some-
thing, a protest, something explicit. Neelan
said:

“Now, look here, I don’t really mind stay-
ing aboard, but you’re taking a pretty high-
' handed manner. What’s up? It’s all very well
for me to keep saying it’s none of my busi-
ness. But every few seconds you push some-
thing new at me until — well, I think I have
a right to a few general facts.”

“Like hell you have!” the man snapped.

Neelan persisted: “What’s your name? I
don’t think it will hurt you if I know who you
are.”

“Come along!” It was a curt command.
“I’ll show you the engine room.”

He motioned with his gun, then paused.
His long face twisted into a frown. “I guess
I can tell you my name.” He smiled with
sudden savage exultation. “After all, she
knows it. My name is Rel Greer.”

It meant nothing except — he wasn’t Ker-
shaw. And admitted it. But who the devil
was she ? Neelan said:

“You’re a scientist?”

The man flushed. The color crowded into
his cheeks in a flood of anger, and then, almost
instantly, he turned even whiter than he had
been. He snapped:

“The best scientist on this side of — ” Greer
stopped the words with a visible effort. He
swallowed hard, and then he glared at Neelan,
and raged: “What are you trying to do — pump
me? Now, let’s go. Any further talk can
wait till lunch time.”

Neelan hesitated. The fellow’s unexpected
anger astounded him; and yet —

Questions quivered on his lips. He felt him-
self on the verge of vital information. It re-
quired a distinct effort to remember his dan-
gerous position.

Quietly, he turned, and led the way down
into the bowels of the ship.

They came to a world of engines. Titanic
drivers of the approved point-expand-point
design, glistening oval-shaped monsters that
filled all one great room, clustering almost

27

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

belly to sleek belly over the floor.

Neelan counted them from the bottom of the
stairs with a gathering surprise: one, two . . .
seventeen —

"But,” he said, amazed, “these are one-
hundred-million-cycle engines. Since when has
a ship under a thousand-feet length needed
more than two such supers, and one of them
for emergency only— let alone seventeen?”

He saw that Greer was enjoying his aston-
ishment. The man stood with a faint sneer
of superiority on his pasty-white face.

“This ship is a new invention,” he said
smugly. “I’m selling it. I’m negotiating, and
have been for some weeks, with the empress
herself.”

He looked hard at Neelan. “I decided on
the way down to tell you that. It isn’t any
of your business, but I don’t want you worry-
ing your head off about it, and maybe prowl-
ing around.

“Now you know where you stand. It’s her
idea that the whole thing be kept quiet. And
I pity any interloper who goes counter to her
wishes in — anything. The Earth wouldn’t be
big enough to hold such a fool unless he was
a Weapon Shop man. There, is everything
clear?”

Neelan mustered a nod. He couldn’t have
spoken to save his life. He felt so sick that it
was like a physical pain. For — just like that
— the reality of what had happened came clear.

The great scientist, Kershaw, had hired Gil
and Greer and perhaps others to assist him in
perfecting his invention. Somewhere along the
line, Greer had murdered everyone else, and
taken oontroTof the ship.

There were blurs in that logic structure, de-
tails missing — for instance, why had a whole
year elapsed before Greer acted — but the main
sequence of events was only too obvious.

Gil had died so that this creature might
feel himself safe to dispose of an invention
important enough to interest the Empress
Isher.

“What I want,” Greer’s voice penetrated to
him, “is for you to lift one engine at a time
into the repair shop on the floor above, and
fix it before you even touch another. None of
this mass production stuff of doing the same
plate on each engine one after the other, and
so on — ”

Greer stopped short. His eyes were brown
pools of suspicion. “What’s the matter? You
gave me a funny look there.”

Neelan managed to say: “I was thinking

that you certainly are taking precautions.”

Greer relaxed, and looked pleased. “Oh,
I’m taking no chances. I want to be able to
leave here at a moment’s notice, if anybody
tries to double-cross me.”

Neelan scarcely heard. His mind was
thrumming like a machine. The man had re-
vealed himself so irrevocably now that there
was no longer any doubt.

The silly, stupid, egotistical fool. Standing
there and talking knowingly about not doing
more than one engine at a time.

The insides of different atomic motors, once
they had been in operation, were simply not
allowed together. No two engines ever
stopped at the same “boiling” point. Exposed
to each other, a leveling flow would start, that
would ruin the plates, and probably everything
else in the vicinity.

And if plates from seventeen motors ever
started interflowing—

Neelan couldn’t even let himself picture it.
The catastrophe would be on such a vast scale
that part of the ship would dissolve into its
component elements, and the rest would droop
into shapeless blobs.

No wonder Greer had reacted so violently
to the question as to whether or not he was
a scientist. Whatever else he was, he wasn’t
even a mechanic when it came to atomic en-
ergy — and therefore the one question about
his status must have seemed to him potent with
hidden meanings.

Very, very definitely, Neelan thought
grimly, he was going to carry out that part of
Greer’s orders forbidding mass repairing. As
for the rest — his mind paused icily — it
shouldn’t be hard for a man like himself to
best an ignoramus like Greer. It —

Greer was speaking again: “I’ve fixed up a
place for myself in the empty room above the
repair shop. I’ll spend most of my time there
during the next couple of months. It isn’t
that I don’t trust you, but while I’m there, I’ll
know that you’re not wandering around the
ship, prying into secrets.”

Neelan was able to say: “I’ll get busy right
away.”

He was trembling, as he climbed up to the
repair room. It seemed hardly credible that
it could have happened so soon but — his op-
portunity was upon him.

He had his purpose. The only thing was,
Greer didn’t go up to the next level right away.
He hung around like a man starved for com-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

28

pany, but at the same time afraid of it.

At any other time, with anyone else, Neelan
would have felt at least a bleak sympathy.
Of all the emotions he could appreciate, it was
loneliness.

Not now! A blaze of impatience racked
him. Damn you, he thought, get out of here.
Get up to your guard room.

It struck him suddenly what he must do.
“I’ll bore him stiff,” he thought savagely.

He began to examine the tools, conscious of
Greer’s eyes on him. There were mobile
cranes and clamping machines, and • welders
and de-welders, and serrated polishers, all on
the necessary gigantic scale, and all — one
glance at meters plus a surge of testing power
sufficed to verify the fact — ready for action.

But how would a nonscientist like Greer
know that? The important thing was, it
seemed to Neelan, that he gain control of the
ship before he took an engine apart. Other-
wise he’d be tied down for at least four days.

An atomic motor simply wasn’t left stand-
ing in pieces. Far better, therefore, to spend
several hours seeming to check over the repair
tools.

A half-hour passed. From somewhere be-
hind Neelan, Greer said:

“So you’ve spent a great deal of your life
on other planets. What brought you back?”
There could be no hesitating over that. The
man knew too much. “My brother’s death!”
Neelan said.

“Oh. Your brother died?”

“Yes.” Lay it on thick, Neelan thought.
“Yes, he used to send me an allowance. When
that stopped, I made inquiries, and it seems
he’s been missing for a year, unregistered. It’ll
take about six months more to close the es-
tate, but, as you know, the courts recognize
nonregistration as proof of death in these days
of multiple assassinations.”

“I know,” was all Greer said.

In the silence that followed, Neelan thought
grimly: “Let him mull that over. It wouldn’t
do any harm, in case something went wrong,
for Greer to believe that Gil and he had no
strong feelings for each other. In fact, press
the point.”

“It’s more than ten years,” Neelan said,
“since I saw him. I found I didn’t have the
faintest sense of kinship. I didn’t give a damn
whether he was dead or alive. Funny.”

Greer said: “You’re going back into space?”
Neelan shrugged. Abruptly, it was irritating
again to have to talk to the man. But there

was no evading a direct question. “Nope!
Earth for me from now on. There’s more ex-
citement, fun, pleasure.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Greer, after a silence,
“exchange my last year in space for all the
pleasure in Imperial City.”

“Each to his own taste — ” Neelan began.

And stopped. A thrill burned along his
nerves, and flared into his brain. His will —
to get the man up to the insulation room —
collapsed into secondary importance.

For here was information.

Slowly, the mental repercussions of the
words died. Puzzlement came. Actually, he
hadn’t learned much. What Greer had done
during the last year wouldn’t explain much.
Gil had been dead during the whole time.

The picture remained as blurred as ever,
except for one thing: Greer had volunteered
the new fact. He wanted to talk. He could
be led into saying more.

Neelan said: “My idea of life isn’t cruising
around space looking for more meteorites.
I’ve done it, and I know.”

“Meteorites!” Greer exploded. “Are you
crazy? Do you think the Empress Isher would
be interested in meteorites? This is a hun-
dred-billion-credit deal? Do you hear that?
And she’s going to pay it too.”

He began to pace the floor, a rising exeite-
. ment in his manner. He whirled suddenly on
Neelan.

“Do you know where I’ve been?” he de-
manded. “I — ”

He stopped. The muscles of his face worked
convulsively. Finally, he managed a grim
smile. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said. “You’re
not pulling anything out of me. Not that it
really matters but — ”

He stood there, staring at Neelan. Abruptly,
he twisted on his heel, climbed the stairway,
and disappeared from view.

Neelan gazed at the stairway, his mind al-
most blank, but conscious of one thing: The
time had come for action.

Neelan examined the ceiling metal with a
modified transparency, and nodded finally in
satisfaction. Four inches thick, the usual alloy
of lead and “heavy” beryllium, atomically
processed.

The transparency also showed the exact spot
where Greer was sitting, a blurred figure, read-
ing a book. Or rather, holding a book. It
was impossible to see whether he was read-
ing.

29

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Neelan felt himself cold, humorless. His
only emotion was a remote, deadly pleasure
that Greer was sitting up there, smugly imag-
ining himself in control of the situation. To
think that the man had brought an easy-chair
into an empty room without even considering
why the room was empty.

The insulation “gap,” confining areas where
power was developed or used in large amounts
was old both in law and of necessity. The
legal restrictions had been so effective that
most people were probably not even aware
that the danger or the protection existed. And
yet at the same time scientists like Gil or

Kershaw would be so familiar with the idea
•of the restrictions that it probably had never
occurred to them that others might not know.

Which, Neelan thought, was ideal.

He maneuvered the heavy polisher directly
under the spot where Greer was sitting, and
turned its finely toothed surface to point up-
■ward. Then he began his estimation.

Greer had looked about one hundred seventy
pounds. Two thirds of that, roughly, was one
hundred fourteen. To be on the safe side,
allow for a blow that would kill a man of a
hundred pounds. Greer didn’t look too physi-
cally fit. He’d need the handicap.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

80

There was, of course, the four-inch floor to
figure in. Fortunately, its resistance was a
formula based on tension.

To Neelan, it was briefly interesting to re-
member the day in the university when the
lab professor had illustrated with a tiny ma-
chine the physical impact that resulted from
exposure to the active surface of power-driven
tools.

The model lab machine had delivered a blow
as of a gently thrust fist. This polisher
would —

Greer simply crumpled.

Neelan went upstairs to where the man lay
sprawled on a leg-rest chair. He examined the
unconscious body with a color transparency,
for detail.

No bones broken. And the heart still beat.
Good. A dead man wouldn’t be able to an-
swer questions.

There were a lot of questions.

It required considerable mathematical work
to plot a system of force lines that would bind
Greer into a reasonably comfortable position,
allowing his arms and legs to move, and his
body to turn, and yet capable of holding him
forever if necessary.

Neelan spent the following hour going over
the big ship. It was a cursory search only —
there were too many locked doors and packed
storerooms — and it failed to produce what he
was looking for: a Lambeth mind-control ma-
chine.

Logic said there was none aboard. The very
fact that Greer had got on the staff proved
that those fuzzy-minded scientists, Kershaw
and Gil, had not had the sense to test every-
one on ship for validity.

Neelan experienced a surge of helpless an-
ger. What in the world could ever be done
with the type of mind that would spend years
exhaustively exploring the variable reactions
of energy and which would then quite blithely
admit a human snake to a murder opportunity
—and so destroy everything?

His rage faded before the reality of the long
year that had passed. He went down to the
insulation room — and found Greer conscious.

The man glared at him with mingled hate
and fear. His voice made a crescendo of
sounds, of threats, of warnings about what the
empress would do to him. When the babble
finally died down, Neelan said:

“Where are the others? Where are Ker-
shaw and my brother?”

The brown eyes widened, then narrowed to
pin points: “Go to hell!” said Greer. But he
sounded frightened.

Neelan said: “What’s the combination at
this end of that telestat in Room 1874, Trellis
Minor Building?”

No answer.

There was a sensory-energy test, Neelan re-
called, that showed under what degree of tor-
ture a man would talk. It took half an hour
to rig up a testing instrument.

Greer screamed hideously — and Neelan,
shuddering, had his answer: Greer would talk
all right, but it just happened that there was
no one around robust enougn to carry the
torture through.

Neelan used the minutes and the hours of
the afternoon to go over the ship, room by
room. No cursory search, this time. He used
an atomic drill to break recalcitrant locks. The
personal quarters above the control room held
him longest. But Greer had been there before
him.

Nothing remained. Greer had used his time
well. If Gil or Kershaw had ever been aboard,
there were no identifying markers to show it,
no letters, no personal property, nothing that
would ever cause embarrassment to a mur-
derer.

In the air lock at the very nose of the ship
was a fully equipped lifeboat, powered by two
replicas of the giant engines in the main ma-
chine. The lifeboat was about a hundred
feet long.

Nowhere was there a Lambeth mind con-
troller.

He had to have one, if he was ever going to
get an/ information from Greer.

In a strong box in the control room, he found
a hundred thousand credits. A Lambeth
would cost about five hundred so —

He stuffed a thousand credits into his pock-
etbook, then spent nearly a quarter of an hour
experimenting with the door controls. Finally
he set up a time sequence that would open the
doors for ninety seconds at nine a. m. every
day till the power was shut off.

He fed Greer; the man ate sullenly, said at
last:

“You’re going out, I see. You could at least
make it possible for me to free myself if any-
thing should happen to you.”

Neelan said nothing. But under Greer’s
anxious eyes, he put a timer on the force-line
machine, and set it for seventy-two hours.
Then he loaded the man, force lines and all.

31

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

onto an antigravity plate, and carted him up-
stairs to one of the bedrooms above the con-
trol room. His watch said a quarter to seven,
as he emerged into the street.

His mind was intent on the evening ahead,
when he reached Mrs. Dendley’s. He went
straight up to his room. Funny how weary
he was, as if his brain had been lashed to ex-
haustion. It had been a long day, and it
wasn’t over yet. A little nap, and then—

His doorbell tinkled. It was the prim little
maid. “Madam says she noticed you didn’t
look at the letter box, and that a letter came
for you this afternoon by special delivery.
It’s from Mars.”

As he closed the door, Neelan saw that his
hand holding the letter was trembling. He
stood like that for an instant staring down at
the unfamiliar handwriting and at the red sign
of Mars in the upper right-hand corner and —

Shaking, he went to the bed and lay down.
It was restful lying there, and, slowly, his heart
eased from its violent pumping; a measure of
strength crept back into his muscles.

The first coherent thought came; It couldn’t
be a normal answer to the letter he had writ-
ten twenty days before to his Martian post-
office address, asking them to forward any mail
that had arrived for him during the past year.

The mail liners from Earth to Mars took
from eighteen to sixty days for the trip, de-
pending on changing planetary position. On
the day he had written, the trip was scheduled
to take twenty-four days. Twenty-four days
there, twenty-four back.

That wasn’t the answer. And, besides, if
Gil had written him before he died, this wasn’t
the letter. It wasn’t his handwriting. Besides,
no one on Mars knew his address. He was
registered here at Mrs. Dendley’s of course,
but who would—

His curious weakness passed. He sat up,
tore the letter open and emptied the contents
onto the quilt. There were two items inside:
Another letter and a note. The note was from
the Weapon Shops, and it read;

Dear Mr. Neelan:

After your call this morning, I recollected our first
conversation in which you described the various ac-
tions you had taken to trace your brother. Among
other things. I remembered that you stated you had
written to Mars for any mail that might have accumu-
lated there for you.

As you probably know, the Weapon Shops have a
vibratory transmission system that is practically in-
stantaneous over planetary distances. I utilized this

to procure for you the inclosed letter. Please destroy
this note.

The note was unsigned. Neelan held it over
the atomic-powered hearth, and watched it
frizzle away. Then, and not till then, he
picked up the letter that had been with the
note. He was thinking grayly: He’d waited
a whole year, so there was no rush.

The letter was from Gil; and it read:

Dear Dan:

Now I can tell you about the greatest invention in-
die history of the human race.

I had to wait till now, a few hours before we leave,,
because we could not take the risk of the letter being
in any way intercepted. We want to present the world
with a fait accompli. When we come back we intend
to shout our news from the housetops, and have end-
less film and other records to support our story. But
to get down to fact:

There are seven of us, headed by the famous scien-
tist, Del'd Kershaw. Six of us are science specialists;
the seventh is a fellow called Greer, a sort of general
handy man who keeps the books and the records, who
turns on the automatic cookers, and so on. Kershaw is
teaching him how to operate the controls, so that the
rest of us can be relieved of that chore —

Neelan paused there, sick to his soul. “The
children!” he muttered huskily, “those damn
grown-up children.”

After a moment, he thought: So Greer was
a handy man! No wonder the man had known
nothing basic about science, the lecherous, ego-
tistical —

He read on, but there was an odd blur over
his vision that made the words hard to see:

The way I got into the affair is that Kershaw no-
ticed an article of mine in the Atomic Journal, in which
I described that I had been doing some contraterrene
research exactly along the lines of an idea that he had
for the development of his invention.

Right here I might as well say that the chance of
this invention being rediscovered is practically nil. It
embraces, in its conception, too many specialized fields.
You know what we were taught during our training
period, that there are nearly five hundred thousand spe-
cial science fields, and that undoubtedly by skillful co-
ordination of knowledges, countless new inventions
would be forthcoming, but that no known mind train-
mg could ever co-ordinate a fraction of these sciences,
let alone all of them.

I mention this to emphasize once again the impor-
tance of secrecy. Kershaw and I had a midnight con-
ference, and I was hired under the most confidential
. terms.

Dan, listen — the news is absolutely stupendous.
We’ve got a drive that’s so fast it’s like a dream. The
stars are conquered. Almost as soon as I finish this
letter, we leave for Centaurus.

I feel sick and shaky and cold and hot at the mere
idea of it. It means everything. It’s going to blow

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

32

the world wide open. Just think of all those people
who were forcibly dumped on Mars and Venus and the
various moons — it had to be done, of course; somebody
had to live there and exploit their wealth — but now
there’s hope, a new chance on greener, finer worlds.

The worlds will be there, all right; Choicer’s Law of
Planets proved that. From this point onward, man
will expand without limit, and put an end forever to
all those petty murderous squabbles over territory and
ownership of property. Henceforth there will always
be more than enough.

The reason we have to be so careful is that the
Isher Empire cannot hope to survive the unprecedented
emigration that would set in, and the Empress Innelda
will be the first to realize, the first to attempt our utter
destruction.

One more thing: Kershaw and I have discussed the
possible effect of light years of distance on yours and
my sensory relation. He thinks that our speed of with-
drawal from the solar system will give the effect of an
abrupt break, and of course, there will be the agony
of acceleration. We —

Neelan stopped there, his mind rotating like
a power-driven wheel, faster, faster. Why,
that was what he had felt: the agony, then the
break —

Gil wasn’t dead.

Or rather — Neelan felt as if his head was
coming off from the sheer violence of his
thought — Gil hadn’t died that day a year ago.
Somewhere during the journey, Greer had —

Neelan’s thought contorted. Deadly mem-
ory came of the dream he had had, of Gil in
a desert on a nightmare world, racked by in-
credible storms.

The sensory connection still existed. Tenu-
ous, imperceptible during waking hours, it
had manifested itself to that supersensitive
structure that is the human body during sleep
hours. And at a time when, for the first time
in more than a year, he had relaxed his tired
nerves.

He tried to remember just how he had felt
the previous night, the sense of being finished
with the whole business, the swift way he had
fallen into deep, restful sleep; and then, the
dream —

And it had happened last night.

Gil was alive.

Now he must get back to the ship, force
that monstrous villain, Greer, to disgorge the
truth about where he had marooned the first
men to fly to the stars and —

With a terrible effort, Neelan caught his
twisting brain, and held it hard in one spot.
No use getting excited. He couldn’t possibly
get back into the ship till morning; so carry
on as planned.

Visit the Weapon Shop, and tell the man

what had happened. Buy a Lambeth, call up
Professor Rayburn, perhaps take in a show to
quiet the jumpiest case of nerves he’d ever;
had; and then, in the morning, start off for far
Centaurus,

Neelan found himself repeating the fabu-
lous name out loud, as if it was a melody, a
pure music sound. It was a long moment
before he remembered that he hadn’t finished
the letter. There was only a paragraph:

. . . We will probably be separated for the first time
since we were bom. It’s going to feel very empty and
lonely.

I know you’re envying me, Dan, as you read this.
When I think of all the thousands of years that man
has dreamed of the stars, of how it has been proven
time and again that it can’t be done, I know exactly
how you feel. Particularly you who were the adven-
turer of our family.

Wish me luck, Dan, and watch your tongue.

Your other half,
Gix>.

It was the final warning that brought the
real spurt of uneasiness. Abruptly, he didn’t
like his position. His best bet, Neelan thought,
was to get away from this house where he
was registered. If the empress was keeping
any watch on Greer’s spaceship, the presence
of a stranger aboard would certainly have been
reported.

It might even be advisable to try to get
hold of an invisibility belt, and so sneak aboard
the ship when the doors opened in the morn-
ing. But first, memorize the letter, then burn
it. Take no chances anywhere.

Outside, the air was fresh and cool. Night
was nearer, he saw. More lights were coming
on. The city was putting on its costume jew-
elry; and the result was a developing glitter
that titillated his eyes.

Neelan walked along alertly, his hand near
his gun. All weariness seemed gone from him.
Wonderful what a good mental bracer could do
to tone up the body.

He had a purpose, hope; he would do his
damnedest.

He saw the carplane swoop down to the curb
beside him, but that was normal enough. It
was a regular stop; and four men were waiting
for it besides himself.

The door of the machine opened; and at that
penultimate second, Neelan snatched his gun.
Marvelous instrument that it was, it leaped
from its holster to meet his reaching fingers.
But even that was too late.

The four men had him — wrists, legs, body.

33

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

They bundled him into the darkened interior.
The next instant the machine was hurtling up-
ward.

VI.

Around Neelan was darkness. Acceleration
pressed him hard against his seat. Skillfully
interlaced force lines held him there firmly.
Of the men who had jammed him into the arti-
ficially blackened interior, there was not sound
nor sign. He had time to feel thoroughly ill.

He was caught, completely. The empress’
forces must have been watching the hangar and
its super-ship day and night; and now, the
universe was lost.

As swiftly as it had accelerated, the car-
plane began to slow. It was still decelerat-
ing as it landed; and then, its interior still in
darkness, taxied at great speed down what
seemed a long, curving incline.

It stopped finally with a lurch; and for the
first time there was movement, low voices, a
drift of meaningful and meaningless sound:

“ — search him . . . then ... at once. . . .
She’s waiting — ”

In the artificial night, fingers fumbled over
Neelan; he felt his gun, that had automatically
returned to its holster, jerked away. The
pocket in which were the thousand credits
lightened. Hands grabbed him at last.

“This way.”

It was brighter outside, but only by com-
parison. Glowing wisps clung to the roof of
the corridors along which he was led, point
sources of light that held their tiny radiance
in tight loops, as if fearing to shed it afar.

A door opened; and a glare tortured Neelan’s
eyes. When he could see again, he saw that
he was in a large, tastefully furnished room;
and that a woman sat on a settee before a tea
table.

She was pouring tea from a platinum teapot,
and she said in a softly rich voice:

“Do you take cream, milk or lemon, Mr.
Neelan?”

She had green eyes, this woman, and a dis-
tinctively long face. Unmistakable, famous
face. The sight of her shocked Neelan to his
bones. Government, yes — he had expected
that, but not her, personally.

It was the echo of her quiet words that
braced him, eased his tensing nerves, made it
possible for him to meet the moment with
only that one instant of falter.

Neelan bowed slightly. “Milk,” he said,
“your majesty.”

He came forward warily, and saw that the
empress was gazing up at him slant-eyed.
Neelan thought tremblingly: Thank God, he
knew the truth, oh thank God.

Otherwise, this cozy little trap might have
caught him. It wouldn’t have taken much,
without Gil’s letter, to make him give up the
whole miserable business.

The woman was inclining her head. “Sit,
please,” she said.

Neelan sank into the chair indicated, and
took his cup of tea, and waited.

And waited.

The empress sat sipping her drink — she had,
he noticed, taken lemon in hers — and staring
into space. After a while, Neelan began to
admire her patience. Inwardly, she must be
straining. What was it Gil had said:

“The Isher Empire cannot survive the un-
limited emigration that would set in, and the
empress will be the first to realize, the first
to attempt our utter destruction — ”

Get back to the ship, Neelan thought, get
back safe. Nothing else mattered. For some-
where out there in immensity were Gil and
Kershaw, and only he of all the human race
could save them.

Only he, who had invented nothing, could
help mankind to attain the remote stars and
ultimate destiny.

Abruptly, the silence racked his nerves, the
tremendousness of the stakes hurt his brain.
He shifted uneasily in his chair and —

The empress spoke gently: “Mr. Neelan,
you occupy a unique position in the world of
great affairs. Your government, your — em-
press — require your loyal and faithful serv-
ices.”

Neelan tried to look puzzled. “I shall be
only too happy,” he said, “to do anything that
is required of me. I am a loyal subject of
your majesty. But I think a mistake must
have been made. What unique position do I
occupy?”

She was looking at him from under half-
closed lashes; and the intensity of her gaze
gave Neelan a tingling start. Her eyes posi-
tively glowed, as she said, more sharply:

“What were you doing aboard the space-
ship of Rel Greer?”

Neelan felt no great satisfaction in the brief
surprise he mustered for the question. But
he explained in an even tone about the ad, his
need for a job. The woman listened without
interruption till he had finished, then she said

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 84

to somebody behind him:

“Zeydel, was there such an ad?”

“I am, your majesty,” said a man’s harsh
voice, “already trying to • get the Public Ad
Service.”

Neelan turned slowly. There was an alcove,
hidden by a long screen, behind which sat sev-
eral men. He couldn’t be sure whether there
were four or five.

The voice of Zeydel was hammering into a
telestat. There was a pause, a click, and
then: “Yes, your majesty, there is such an
ad.”

It was the woman; and Neelan felt impelled
to answer the implication in that single^worded
question:

‘Tf you mean by that, your majesty, that
the position is still open, I assure you it is not.
I am definitely hired; and he was so anxious
that, although tomorrow is Rest Day, I agreed
to return at nine in the morning.”

There was silence; and Neelan had time to
realize that the tea party was over. And the
way they had pounced on an infinitesimal
variation showed what he 'was in for.

It was going to be a long night.

Silence settled again, like a weight. The
woman sat with a vague smile on her face, her
eyes veiling her thoughts. The teacup in her
fingers remained unnaturally motionless in one
position, as the minutes dragged. At last, she
set the cup down; and it was as if a rehearsed
drama had received its cue.

In the background, the voice of Zeydel be-
gan to intone:

“The information is now coming through,
your majesty. His name is Daniel Neelan, one
of twins, born 4758 Isher, thirty-three years
ago, to Edee Neelan. Their father died before
they were born; and accordingly, their mother,
unable to guarantee support, put them under
contract to the Eugenics Institute — ”

Neelan listened intently, as the word pic-
ture unfolded. It was all there, in essence:
His leaving Earth, his gambling career, the
fact that he had killed several men in self-
defense, the discovery by himself and Carew
of the “heavy” beryllium meteorite; and finally
his return to Earth to look for his brother.
When Zeydel’s voice finally died away, the
empress said softly:

“I see that you are one of us, Mr. Neelan,
one of the lucky born. A man who knows how
to live, and how to die.”

In spite of himself, in spite of the greatness
of the issues, Neelan began to feel fascinated.
The Imperial Innelda was different, different
from anything he had ever pictured. Not cold
and stiff and regal, but warm and human
and —

“I have,” she continued, “divided human be-
ings into two general categories: Those who
spend their lives obsessed by fear, and those
who do not. I cannot honestly feel too sorry
for the former no matter what happens. Only
the latter count in the scheme of things.”

The strange thing about her words was that
he seemed raised by them, and compelled
henceforth to live in the upper of the two
realms she had described. Neelan found his
voice:

“I would say the classification is a little se-
vere, particularly because bravery is a matter
of early training.”

The green eyes were steady on him, as he
spoke, enigmatic. Neelan had a sense of
gazing into fathomless depths, and he thought:
Careful, careful.

The woman said in her luscious voice:

“I want to talk to you. I want to convince
you. What I desire from you is too important
for there to be the slightest doubt about your
actions.”

“Your majesty,” Neelan protested, “if you
would tell me — ”

She cut him off, imperiously: “I must make
myself clear; you must understand. This
morning, Dan Neelan, when I was informed
that a strange young man . . . that is, you . . .
had entered the Greer spaceship, I immediately
ordered the execution of a Captain Hedrock,
a Weapon Shop spy, whom I had previously
tolerated in the palace.”

Her voice, so abruptly ablaze, burned on:
“I tell you this to illustrate graphically the
completeness and extent of the precautions I
am prepared to take to insure that my will
shall prevail. Consider his fate as symbolical
of what will befall anyone who dares to oppose
me in this matter, or who bungles his part
of the job.

“Here is what you must and will do: To-
night, before you leave this room, you will
be fitted with an invisibility belt, a miniature
telestat, and a revolver that shoots bullets.

“The reason for such a gun is that Greer
probably carries a Weapon Shop energy gun,
which has the power of protecting its wearer
from any small-powered atomic revolver.

“The reason for the telestat is that we will

35

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

then know exactly what you are doing or say-
ing every second of the time between now and
the accomplishment of your task.

“As a further means of educing your hon-
esty, the telestat will have in it an energy
charge which, by remote control, will blow
you to bits if you start talking or writing out
of turn.

“The telestat will also apprise us of the ex-
act instant that you complete your work. Be-
fore you can have an opportunity of, for in-
stance, funning off with the spaceship, great
mobile energy guns will be tearing enormous
gaps in the walls of the hangar and the ship;
and within minutes my men will be swarming
inside.

“Your task is simple, straightforward; At
an opportune moment during the day, you will
render - yourself invisible and, thus protected,
approach Greer and put a bullet through his
head. If you fail, or in any way deceive us,
you die. And now — ”

Her tensed body relaxed; the flame died
from her gaze. There was suddenly a warm
and generous smile in her eyes, and around
her lips. She said in her earlier, quieter voice:

“I hope, Dan Neelan, that I have made my-
self clear.”

There was no doubt of that. The tigress
had unsheathed her claws; and they were made
of steel and quiescent violence.

The soul of this woman must be pure fire.

Neelan sat very still, forcing himself to pic-
ture what she had said — going to the space-
ship —

His thought kept coming back to that in
little flashes of mental intensity. All was not
lost. They intended to let him return to the
ship, under terrible restrictions to be sure,
but — return! With Greer impotent and en-
chained, something must be possible, some
way out, however dangerous or involved.

The worst part was that energy bomb. It —

The men were coming out of the alcove, out
of the dimness into the light; and there were
five, not four. Not that the number mat-
tered. A billion more out there in the great
world would eagerly take their place.

But these looked mature, capable. All were
easily in their late thirties, the oldest, Zeydel,
possibly as much as forty-five.

Zeydel had slate-colored eyes, a thin beak
of a nose, and lips that formed a long slit across
his face. He bowed to the woman, a faint,
grim smile on his raffish countenance.

“Your majesty!”

“Speak.”

“It will be necessary to undress Mr. Neelan
partially in order to fit the invisibility belt.”

The empress’ eyes smiled at Neelan sardoni-
cally: “I am sure Mr. Neelan realizes that
I am the mother of nineteen billion people.
I have reached the age,” she finished coolly,
“when only bad manners shock me. I must
see that everything is done right. Proceed.”

Zeydel said: “Your upper clothes only. The
invisibility belt fits directly over the waist.
We won’t feed it power until you’re inside the
spaceship; all you have to do then is pull this
switch — ”

Neelan watched the flat, flexible, flesh-
colored thing being strapped around his waist.
It was quite heavy; and it felt unpleasant.
He could not shake off the unwholesome im-
pression that he was being fitted with his death
raiment.

“And here,” said Zeydel from that sword-
edge-shaped mouth of his, “is the telestat.”

Neelan’s mind did a twisting somersault,
as he stared at the thing.

A necktie! By all the gods, a necktie! A
little thicker than it should be, a little stiff
for cloth, but the color pattern, the general
appearance, was quiet perfection.

It hung around his neck, lighter than he had
expected after the weight of the invisibility
belt. But it made him feel hot, then cold,
then hot again, as spasmic memory burst on
him that in it was the energy charge.

He pictured the explosion tearing his head
off — And then a fountain pen was being
shoved into his vest pocket, and the gritty
voice of Zeydel was explaining:

"That’s the gun. Simply point it, and press
on the clip. It has two bullets in it; and
now — ”

The slate eyes surveyed Neelan with icy
detachment. The man’s voice had a flat
quality, as he continued;

“You have heard our glorious ruler’s com-
mands. You must consider yourself a soldier
who has been called to duty against a man
for whom there can be no sympathy.

“This scoundrel, Greer, has deliberately set
himself against the Crown. He has^an inven-
tion which endangers the State, and which
must be completely withheld from the knowl-
edge of the public. Greer presumes to regard
himself as a negotiator of equal rank with the
government; and, from a position of tempo-
rary immunity, to argue arrogantly, demand

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

86

impossible terms, and otherwise conduct him-
self in a treasonous manner.

“It further appears that he had hired you
to repair the ship, which he was offering for
sale, apparently with the purpose of sneaking
off in some fashion after he has secured the
money he demands. The very type of long-
lasting repair he requires shows the careful
nature of the betrayal he is planning.

“Accordingly, you are herewith charged to
destroy him as ordered in the name of Her
Imperial Majesty, Innelda, Empress of the
Solar System, Grand Descendant of the House
of Isher. And now, if you wish to ask any
questions — ”

“None,” said Neelan. “I understand every-
thing.”

It was immensely more than that. He felt
better. His world was righting before the lift-
ing consciousness of imminent freedom. There
would be precious time to think things over
and —

“One more precaution, Mr. Neelan.” It
was the empress, and Neelan faced her slowly,
as she went on: “One precaution, and then
you will be shown the room where you will
spend the night.”

She turned to her henchman. “Zeydel,
bring on the Lambeth.”

Neelan was glad after a moment when a
man's voice — he wasn’t sure whether it was
Zeydel— directed him to sit down.

He sank heavily into his chair, and watched
the glittery little instrument being set up. He
wondered if he looked as sick as he felt. He
should have known of course, but he hadn’t
expected a Lambeth.

Hadn’t when he came right down to it re-
motely grasped that his death had been in-
evitable from the beginning.

As soon as they discovered that the doors
of the spaceship would open at nine in the
morning, and that Greer could offer no re-
sistance, why, they would dispense with inter-
mediaries.

His one advantage, so vital that it hurt even
to think about it, was about to be stripped
from him by a machine that needed only the
proper questions to elicit the correct answers;
and accordingly he had once chance— one slim
chance:

He must agree to the main points. And
mean it so that the machine would believe him.
Believe him beyond all possibility of the regis-

tering needles being tremulous and uncertain.
Therefore —

Neelan’s eyes narrowed to slits. He must
be prepared to kill Greer, if necessary. The
problem of what he would eventually do with
the man had been a dim question far back in
his mind. But now there was no alternative.
Greer must die.

He saw that the instrument was being sepa-
rated, divided into two parts. The focusing
section stood on the tea table, its cone-shaped,
radiant muzzle pointing at him. The empress
held the receiver, with its bank of registering
needles, on her lap.

She looked up, her lips parted for speech;
and there was no doubt at all that the time
had come. He lived or died according to his
ability to control the next few minutes.

“Your majesty, may I speak?”

She gave him a quick look. Puzzlement was
in that glance, and a swift suspicion. The
grim thought came to Neelan that he was deal-
ing with one of the sharpest, most agile minds
in the Isher Empire.

The woman nodded finally, stiffly. “Very
welL”

As he began, he saw her gaze flick down to
the needles. He had the sudden sensation that
he was walking a tightrope with closed eyes,
but there could be no hesitation:

“Naturally, I’ve been thinking over your
commands. As you say, I have killed men
before, and undoubtedly I can do it again. I
don’t like to shoot even an animal without
giving it a chance but — ”

He paused there, riffling over the words in
his mind to see if so much as a single one of
them didn’t fit both his situation and theirs.
They all did. Neelan went on:

“I’m not sure exactly all you want to know,
but I swear that I learned of the job with
Greer through the Public Ad Service. And
I would like to say that, circumstances being
what they are, I am prepared to kill Greer.
I shall kill him with the revolver you gave me.
There, is that what you want?”

It was of course, basically. He watched
her, trying not to make it a glare of anxiety.
To his relief he saw that she was not looking
at him, but the needles. The empress said
abruptly, sharply:

“Zeydel, come over here, and watch.”

To Neelan, she said even more sharply:
“Repeat that about killing Greer.”

Neelan complied, silently cursing the effi-
ciency of the machine that must be register-

37

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

ing at least fractionally the crosscurrents in
his thought. It was Zeydel who broke the
silence, respectfully:

“He means it, high majesty, but it’s not
clear. I would suggest that he is a man who
will have to nerve himself to killing cold-
bloodedly, and he won’t do that until the time
approaches.”

The empress shook her head, impatiently
dismissing that solution. There was more color
in her cheeks. She stood up, began to pace
the floor, her long skirt rustling. Several min-
utes passed, and then she faced Neelan. Her
eyes were icy regions; her voice was an edged
weapon that jabbed at him:

“Why did you volunteer that information,
rather than wait for my question? You’re
hiding something, aren’t you?”

She grabbed at the Lambeth receiver with
feline eagerness. “Answer me that question,”
she said avidly. “Are you hiding something?”

Neelan sighed. He felt old and tired. Here
was the dead end to all his hopes; and only
courage remained. Courage and the knowl-
edge of what defeat would mean.

“I refuse,” he said slowly, weightily, “to an-
swer that question.”

He added after a moment: “Or any other
question.”

There was a hush that filled the room, an
incredulous pause, heavy with suppressed
shock. The climax, Neelan realized bleakly,
had come upon them too suddenly. Their
minds wouldn’t adjust. The men looked at
each other. The woman stood stone-still, her
head bent forward, and her face had not a
semblance of the smile that had graced it be-
fore. She said at last, almost sighing the
words:

“You realize what you are doing? You are
pitting yourself against the Crown, your law-
ful government.”

Neelan tried to picture that as she meant
it; and it was an unnerving picture. The Isher
emperors and empresses had, to a vast extent,
the affection of their subjects. Even those
who opposed them recognized how great a
family it was; even the Weapon Shops had
never tried to overthrow them.

Neelan steadied himself. “I would like to
point out that I have agreed to do what you
ask. What I am hiding is a personal matter.
It—”

He was cut off by a tinkle of laughter. He
stared, startled by the sound, and by the look

on the empress’ face. The woman’s laughter
continued, musical but- strangely unpleasant.
It ended finally on an unnatural note.

“If it’s a crime,” she said, “however horri-
ble, I absolve you from it. I pardon you.
Do you hear that? No matter what it is, no
court will ever try you for it. But I must
know. Tell me.”

Almost, she didn’t look human. Her eyes
flamed. Her face was a white mask of in-
tensity. She stood straight and tall. Neelan
said:

“I have agreed — ”

She cut him off in astounded rage: “Are
others involved? Then they, too, are guilt-
less. No court shall touch them. No investi-
gation shall be made. If one is under way, it
will be dropped. I pardon them. I forgive
them everything, any crime, murder, lust, rob-
bery, treason — anything.”

There was nothing to say. Neelan sat in
his chair, stiff, conscious of the woman pacing
up and down in front of him, and that in her
eyes was a stark disbelief.

“I’ll give you,” her voice burned, “a hun-
dred million credits. Do you understand?
More money than you can ever spend or gam-
ble away. It will be deposited to your ac-
count in any bank this minute. Simply yield
yourself to all questions, and everything that
you can ever ask for from this world will be
yours.”

It was her utter desperation that did it.
The tight, terrible feeling inside Neelan began
to ease. He had never expected anything like
this: The Empress of Isher acting like a mad
woman.

She needed him. That was the reality be-
hind her bloodthirsty threats, her wild offers.
She couldn’t get her men into the spaceship
while Greer was there. Or rather — while her
fevered brain imagined Greer was there, and
in a position to launch the great ship into
space.

“You mean, you won’t do it?”

Her voice was a whisper. She swayed as if
she was about to faint. Her eyes were wide.
For a moment, she looked ill unto death.

“Your majesty — ” It was Zeydel, anxious-
toned.

“Silence!” Her voice was a whipsnap of
sound. She waved at Zeydel, as if she was
striking him.

She came forward, close to Neelan, peering

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

38

down at him where he sat as at some incom-
prehensible monster. Her voice, that remark-
able, flexible voice, was suddenly almost caress-
ing:

“You don’t look insane. You look normal,
a handsome young man. You can have no
reason to want to die.”

“Your majesty,” Neelan said, “surely the
fact that I have agreed — ”

He must keep pressing that; it was the great
hook that kept him hanging on this side of
the death line. Desiring so much, she must
accept the less, if more was not to be had.

She seemed not to have heard. Her voice,
still soft, gentle, cut across his: “There are
ways of making people talk.”

That was chilling. The very quietness made
the threat the more deadly. Neelan said:

“No drug will work on my definitely opposed
will. I have the three advanced mind train-
ings, for memory, for control, for — ”

“I was not thinking,” the empress said ca-
ressingly, “of drugs.”

She whirled. “Zeydel!” Her voice pierced

the great silence of the room. “Zeydel, bring
on the sensory vibrator.”

She caught herself, and turned slowly back
to Neelan. Her face was as pale as snow, her
eyes looked old and bleached green.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Neelan,” she said quietly.
“You may not believe this, but I have never
before had a man or woman physically tor-
tured. Killed, yes; but not tortured. And
yet I must overcome this fantastic refusal of
yours. Won’t you please be reasonable?”

Her appeal seemed without meaning. He
felt remote, cold, and there was an awful sar-
donicism in him, that grew and grew to mon-
strous proportions until, finally, looking at her,
he said:

“Your first torture, is it?” He laughed, and
knew from the naturalness of that laugh that
he was no longer quite sane. He finished
coolly: “I am sure your majesty will survive
the experience.”

Her manner froze visibly. “Yes,” she said
at last through clenched teeth, “yes, I will
survive.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

IN TIMES TO COME

A new author takes first place in next
month’s issue — Lawrence O’Donnell’s story,
“Clash By Night,” has the cover plate. It’s a
curious sort of background O’Donnell proposes,
a civilization starting up on Venus after Man
has been driven from a. ruined Earth when
atomic fire broke loose and spread over the
whole planet. A civilization under the sea, in
domes, because the appalling savagery of the
land made it impossible for the first colonists
to establish there, and their descendants, estab-
lished under the sea, hadn’t troubled to move
out yet.

On the surface of the seas, and nibbling at
the edges of the continents, were the mercenary
soldier bands — the defense forces the cities em-
ployed to war against each other. The story
is the tale of one of those mercenaries, know-
ing the futility of his function — the cities will
get over that feuding and fight the savage jun-
gles of the land eventually — and wanting to

quit it. Every reason to quit the life of the
warrior, too — all but one.

An excellent piece of action science-fiction
for a first-timer, or an old-timer, for that mat-
ter. I’ve said before that most top-notch sci-
ence-fiction writers turn in top-notch material
very soon after they start trying— the first one,
or the second or third, usually. It still holds.
It would probably hold for a lot of people
who’ve never quite had the urging to try
pounding out the yarn they had in mind.

I most deeply wish some of them would now.
It’s heartbreaking, though, to have someone
write a lovely yam like “Clash By Night,”
raise my hope of one new man to replace some
of the men now in the army and navy — and
then find that, like O’Donnell, he’s about to
enlist. O’Donnell conies for the first time next
month; I now find it’s very apt to be his last
for the duration. You can expect to hear from
him again, though — about the spring of 1944
is my personal guess!

39

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

FLIGHT

INTO DARKNESS

By Webb Marlowe

A STORY of the reconstruction period after the war — and
the only possible cure for a hundred-percent-convinced Fascist,

illustrated i>y Kramer

Dr. Linkman stepped rapidly across the
subway platform and into the elevator that
went to the street. He stood quiet, with sol-
dierly erectness, as the elevator shot from a
depth of three hundred feet below ground to
more than five hundred above it. His hard
face was expressionless, showing no sign, of the
triumph that boiled within him.

He left the elevator at the eighth level,
walked a block down the glass-inclosed span
and entered his apartment. He skirted the
comfortable living room, went through a bed-
room and entered a small closet. The closet
was bare of furniture. What hung on the wall
gave the tiny room distinction and lent it the
air of being a shrine.

A large, framed photograph of Hoffman
hung there. The fat, cruel face, magnified
many times life-size, stared out challengingly.
Below the picture hung a battered sword and
an officer’s dress helmet.

Dr. Linkman lifted his hand in the forbidden
salute.

“At last, my Leader,” he breathed. “The
day of restoration is dawning!”

The door of the bedroom behind him opened.
Linkman whirled, took a step forward, block-
ing the door of the closet. His crippled
brother, Franz, limped into the room.

Linkman smiled thinly.

“Ah, Franz,” he said. “I have good news
for you.”

The cripple’s sad face lighted.

“Josef! They have made you manager of
the plant?”

“Yes, I have worked my way up in the ap-
proved democratic fashion! After much pon-
dering, our masters have decided that Colonel
General Linkman is gone and the recently
graduated Dr. Linkman is a thoroughly re-
formed character. Why, if I make good on
this assignment, they may even let me — what
do they say? — run for office! Bah!”

“But, Josef, will they . . . will they let you
work on my — ”

“Silence!”

Dr. Linkman strode forward and put both
hands on his brother’s twisted shoulders.

“You will forget that — as they have for-
gotten it! You hear?” He shook the boy a

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

40

little. “Yes, I will work on it! I will build it!
But you must be silent about our work. Un-
derstand?”

Franz nodded. Then he caught sight of
the picture.

“The Leader!” he gasped. “Josef! His pic-
ure is forbidden!”

Linkman drove his fingers into Franz’s shoul-
ders until the boy cried aloud.

“That, too, is another thing you null never
mention,” he said slowly.

“Oh, don’t, Josef! You’re hurting me! But
it is against the law — ”

His voice trailed off into broken sobs.

Linkman’s fingers relaxed slowly, almost
reluctantly, and his arms dropped to his sides.

“Against their law, boy. I obey the Lead-
er’s law!”

Franz’s small body seemed to shrink even
more.

“But my ship . . . your position ... I
thought — ”

Linkman grinned down at him.

“Do not worry, little Franz. Your ship will
be built. It shall be a tribute to his memory.”

He turned back to the closet and saluted
again. Then he closed the closet door, rever-
ently.

“Come, Franz,” he said, almost pleasantly,
“it is time for dinner. And if you doubt me
or my course, little brother, just remember
how all their technicians laughed at you when
you went to them with plans for a rocketship
that would travel to the Moon and beyond!”

Hastings looked from General McClernand
to Oliver. He shifted uneasily in his chair
and looked down at the papers in his hand.

“After all, gentlemen,” he murmured, “I’m
just the head of a department and — ”

41

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“And I’m just an old soldier!” roared Mc-
Clernand. He scowled fiercely at Oliver. “I
don’t pack any weight here, either.”

Mark Oliver grinned amiably at the old
man. His long figure slouched lower in the
chair behind the big desk.

“Sorry, Hastings,” he said gently. “Don’t
let the general’s bickering with me embarrass
you. And don’t be alarmed because he takes
your side of the matter.”

“It isn’t a question of sides, sir,” Hastings
said. “It’s just a question of fact advanced by
my department.”

“Exactly!” bellowed McClernand. He
leaned forward and pounded Oliver’s desk.
“Here’s this soulless Department of Psychologi-
cal Correction cornin’ out and challengin’ your
pet. Linkman! D’ye remember, now, how I
kicked when you appointed him?”

“Of course. You won’t let me forget.”
Oliver’s quiet voice grew a little weary. “You
just won’t forget, Mac, that the war’s over
and we’ve got a job to do— without prejudice.”-

“Maybe I won’t forget. But Hastings, here
— he doesn’t know anything about Linkman’s
past — an’ he comes here — ”

“I . . . ah, beg your pardon, general.”

Hastings was acutely uneasy. The general’s
roars would never have been tolerated in the
Psycho section. He looked at Oliver’s face,
placid under the old man’s wrath. There was
strength, there, underneath the calm. Why
didn’t he use some of it against the soldier’s
irrational outbreaks?

He cleared his throat again.

“If I might state my report,” he ventured.

“Yes, Mac,” said Oliver. “For Heaven’s
sake, pipe down and let Mr. Hastings state
his case.”

Oliver clasped his hands behind his neck
and leaned back. His attitude was one of
careless ease, but his eyes were intent on the
psychologist.

“Very well, sir. Aliem.” He leafed through
the report. “Ah, three mechanics, Cutlar,
Vomov and Lockheim were discharged from
the Zellerkraft plane factory. That’s a native-
managed concern.”

“Your precious Linkman is the head man,”
growled McClernand.

“Charges were,” continued Hastings, “mal-
adjustment to occupation, lack of disciplinary
balance, no receptivity to routine, general
debility and so on.”

“Put that in my language,” ordered Mc-
Clernand.

“Certainly. It means, simply, that they were
lazy, incompetent, insubordinate and took poor
physical care of themselves.”

“Well,” asked Oliver, “why have you come
to me?”

He unclasped his hands and sat up straight
in his chair.

“Just this, sir. The piimary character and
aptitude analyses that were made on these men
gave no indication of such a development.
When they were pronounced ready to begin
work under our goverment, we had every
reason to believe they would progress, not
deteriorate.”

“I see.”

“Further — ” Hastings swallowed and

plunged on. “They have voluntarily applied
to us for testing. Our preliminary examina-
tion gives no evidence that the alleged char-
acter reversal has taken place.”

McClernand jumped to his feet again.

“See!” he snapped. “There’s dirty work.
That Linkman—”

“Just a minute!” Oliver did not raise his
voice, but McClernand became quiet. “A
psychograph of your emotional balance, Mac,
might not give you a very high rating. Now,
please be quiet until I’m through with Mr.
Hastings.”

He turned to Hastings and the young man
fidgeted in his chair again. But Oliver’s tone
was kindly.

“Just what conclusion is your department
trying to draw?” the director asked. “And
why have you come to me?”

“Well, sir — ” Hastings began to wish he’d
never been promoted to such arduous jobs as
arguing with big shots. “We can see no reason
why such charges should have been preferred
against these men. The manager of the factory
is a native of doubtful antecedents — ”

Oliver took out a pipe and began to fill it.
He stared at McClernand’s beet-red face. Al-
though Oliver’s face was impassive, Hastings
could have sworn he saw the director’s lips
twitch.

“Tell me, Mac,” the director asked, “just
what your attitude is.”

“Well,” snarled the old man, "1 think there’s
some of these natives that ought to be taken
out and shot! Linkman’s one of ’em. I know
— I fought him for five years! But you think
he’s reformed! So — after he gets this job—
he cans some employees under suspicious cir-
cumstances — 1 want it investigated.”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

42

Oliver applied the glowing tip of his lighter
to his pipe. He puffed slowly for a few seconds,
then leaned back easily in his chair.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “it has been investi-
gated. Dr. Linkman wrote me of his intention
to discharge those men. With his letter, he
sent affidavits from workmen in the plant,
corroborating his charges. As a final point,
I would remind you that their dismissal was
approved by the plant guild.”

Hastings looked down at his papers.

McCIernand made a wordless noise.

Oliver got up from his desk and walked to
the window. He stared out over the clean,
white city, his view a tangle of arching traffic
spans, needlelike spires of dwellings, spotted
here and there by the dark green of hanging
parks.

“Come here, gentlemen,” he said.

They got up wonderingly and stood by him.

“See,” he said. “That is theirs. Not ours,
theirs. And we must give it back to them as
soon as we can. We have a home of our own,
you know, and I, for one, would like to get
back to it. Because, fundamentally, we don’t
belong here.”

Young Hastings then realized why Mark
Oliver was director of this Occupied Area.
He realized, more dimly perhaps, why he, him-
self, could never hold such a job.

Oliver turned from the window.

“That is why, Mac, and you, too, Mr.
Hastings, that is why I have given Dr. Link-
man his position. Why I will give others
similar positions. I may make mistakes. If
I do, I will remedy those errors as fully as I
am able. But we must, all of us, run the risk
of error — and run that risk cheerfully, so wc
can get our job done and go home.”

He put his hand on Hastings’ shoulder.

“Continue with your tests, Mr. Hastings.
When you have a complete repovt, bring it to
me.”

“Yes, sir.” Hastings put his papers in his
brief case and walked to the door. There he
turned. His eyes behind his glasses were very
bright. “Thank you, sir,” he said.

The door had barely slid shut behind him
when McClernancLgrabbed Oliver by the arm.

“That was all very pretty, Mark,” he
growled. “And good for the youngster. But
you can’t fool these psychiatrists. They’re
scientists — ”

“They’re scientists as long as they agree with
your prejudices, Mac. Now, let go my arm
and 111 order up a drink for us.”

McCIernand straightened and moved back
a pace.

“I’m an old has-been,” he muttered. “My
opinion doesn’t count in these days of love
and kisses for the enemy!”

Oliver threw his arms wide in a gesture of
despair.

“For the love of Heaven, Mac,” he cried,
“just what do you suspect Linkman of doing?”
“I don’t know. I only know he’s in a spot
to do harm if he’s a mind to. And I know
damn well he’s a mind to! The butcher!”
Oliver shook his head wearily.

“Sorry, Mac,” he said quietly. “I can’t
discuss it further. If I err, it’s got to be on
the side of tolerance. That’s why I’m here.”
“All right, all right!” McCIernand stamped
to the door. “Just remember, son, you can’t
teach an old dog new tricks!”

If it had been an old-fashioned door, he
would have slammed it shut behind him.

Dr. Linkman glanced at his wrist watch.
It showed five minutes past five. In the outer
office he could hear his secretary close her
electrotyper.

She appeared in the doorway, coat in hand.
“Good night, Dr. Linkman.”

Linkman smiled benevolently.

“Good night, my dear.”

She frowned a little.

“Don’t stay late, sir. You’ve been working
awfully hard lately.”

“Now, now,” he said. “You run along and
don’t worry about me. You must enjoy your-
self — not think of an old man like me.”

She shook her curly head.

“You’re not old, doctor.”

She smiled again as she went out. Linkman
heard the office door slide shut behind her.
The benevolent look was replaced by a scowl.

“Little flirt,” he grated. “Women in in-
dustry — bah! Their place is in the home, bear-
ing children for the race!” He shrugged. “Ah,
well. That, too, will change.”

He walked over to the production chart on
the wall.

“Twenty-three units per day,” he mused.
“And they allow me just twenty-three units of
raw materials. Our masters are good ac-
countants.” He moved back to his desk and
picked up a scratch pad. His brows con-
tracted as he figured. “Hm-ra-m. To get
material, I must lessen the quality of the
plant’s output. How long, then, before the
inspectors find out?”

43

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

There was a rapid double knock at the door.
Linkman ripped the sheet off the pad and
tossed it down the waste chute.

“Come in,” he called.

A man in working clothes stepped in, locked
the door behind him and walked with swift,
military strides into Linkman’s office,

“My general!” he saluted.

“Major Falkayn!” Linkman returned the
salute. “Sit down, major.” He pushed a box
of cigars across his desk. “Smoke and be com-
fortable. You have earned relaxation.”
Falkayn slumped down in a leather chair,
leaned back and closed his eyes as he puffed
on the cigar. Linkman, too, lit one and the
two men smoked silently for a few moments.
Then Falkayn spoke slowly:

“This is wonderful, sir. The first time 1 have
relaxed with a social equal in ten years! I have
been” — his slow voice grew passionate with
disgust — “a workman! A faithful member of
one of those accursed guilds! Pah!”

Linkman smiled thinly.

"7 have begged my way into a university.”
He raised a clenched fist. “I, a soldier, have
studied plant management and the principles
of democracy! I have allowed myself to be— -
educated!”

He broke into a sharp, grating laugh.

“But that is past. Soon, you and I will wear
uniforms again!”

His cold eyes stared off into space over
Falkayn ’s head. He seemed to be seeing a
vision for his muscles tensed, his shoulders
went back. Falkayn waited respectfully for
a moment, then coughed slightly.

Still staring. Linkman said, “I will make
a great leader, Falkayn. And you shall be my
deputy. Give me your report.”

He leaned back slowly and listened with
half-closed eyes.

“Yes, sir. I have the great pleasure to re-
port that the hull is finished. The left bank
of tubes is installed. The right bank will be
in place in another day. Tonight, we are start-
ing to weld the fuel tanks.”

“An operation of some four days,” mused
Linkman. “And the storage of materials?”
“We have accumulated a four-months’ sup-
ply of all necessities. Our munitions are lim-
ited, though.”

“We must get more! We must work faster!”
Falkayn leaned forward in his chair.

“But, general. We must steal armament.
And those faithful to the Leader’s memory are

few — very few. I, myself, have worked twenty
hours a day — my regular shift in the plant
and the balance on our ship.”

Linkman stood up. Falkayn followed suit
and stiffened to attention.

“These excuses are not valid,” rasped Link-
man. “If you cannot execute my orders, I’ll
replace you, major. I want everything ready
within one week from tonight!”

Falkayn saluted without speaking.

Linkman started to sit down. A faint hum
seemed to come from his desk. He jerked open
the center drawer. The hum grew louder.

“Keep talking,” Linkman hissed. “About
the ship. And loudly!”

As the major continued an expressionless
monologue about the ship’s construction, Link-
man reached to the back of the drawer and
pressed a stud. The huiy stopped. Linkman’s
hand came out, clutching a flat pistol.

Linkman ran past Falkayn.

“Stay here,” as the other turned to follow,
“Keep talking.”

His feet making no sound on the feltex car-
pet of the outer office. Dr. Linkman ran to the
door, snapped the lock and slid it open.

A man crouched there, his ear glued to a
dictascope.

He started to rise and Linkman shot him
twice. The listener collapsed.

“Falkayn!” Linkman bent and lifted the
body. “Wipe the floor clean of any blood/’ he
grunted. “Then lock the door again.”

He carried the body into his office, dropped it
to the floor and bent to search the pockets,

Falkayn peered over his shoulder.

“Who is he?”

“An Intelligence man, of course. I would
think that McClernand set him on me.”

He looked at the miscellaneous data from
the dead man’s pockets.

“Nothing,” Linkman muttered. “As I ex-
pected, of course.”

He straightened, kicked absently at the
corpse, then walked back to his desk.

“Yes,” he said, “it must be McClernand.
The old fool has more sense than the rest of
them.” He pointed at the corpse. “To the
furnaces with that, major. If they have no
evidence, the fools won’t act, no matter how
much they suspect.”

The humming started again.

Linkman drew the pistol from his pocket.
There was a light knock at the door.

“Yes?” Linkman called.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

44

“Oliver, Dr. Linkman.”

Sweat started on Linkman’s brow. Falkayn
drew a pistol, but Linkman gave a wordless
snarl and shook his head. He put his gun back
in the drawer.

“A moment,” he called.

His frantic eyes lighted on the clothes
locker. He stepped over and took out his
coat and hat. He beckoned to Falkayn.

“In here,” the doctor whispered. “Both of
you. Stand on him, if necessary. Stay there
until I return.”

Falkayn dragged the body across the room.
Linkman looked for bloodstains, saw none.
He tossed Falkayn’s cigar into the waste chute

and walked unhurriedly to the door. The
detector in the drawer still hummed.

“Good evening,” the doctor bowed to Oliver.
“You are just in time. I was just leaving.”
“Glad to see you,” smiled Oliver. “Although
I have a complaint to make.”

“A complaint?”

“Yes. You’re working too hard, doctor.”
Linkman smiled in turn.

“One must work to do the job,” he said.
He still stood in the doorway, holding his
hat and coat so that they were very apparent
to his visitor.

“But not too hard,” replied Oliver. “Have
you an engagement, doctor? If not, I’d like

45

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

to take a look around and then — perhaps you
might have dinner with me.”

“You are very kind.” Still smiling. Linkman
stepped back and gestured toward the inner
office. “I am free for the evening. Shall we
take a look at the charts, first? I have some
figures that give me much satisfaction.”

“I know you have.”

As he followed Oliver into the office. Link-
man stared balefully at the director’s broad
back. A knife between those big shoulders —
he shrugged off the idea regretfully. It was
yet no time for personal pleasures.

Oliver stood where the corpse had lain and
glanced around approvingly.

“Very pleasant.” He took a step toward the
big production chart.

“You’ve done well, doctor. I am sincerely
glad for — ”

He broke off. Linkman stiffened. Both
men heard the faint hum of the detector.
Oliver raised his eyebrows and half turned
back to the doctor.

“An infernal machine?” He smiled, but his
eyes were grave.

“Not at all.” Linkman returned the smile.
“Just a little gadget I’ve developed myself.
(It was really Franz’s invention.) An alarm,
based on the photoelectric principle.”

“So? Let me see it. Perhaps you’ve got
some patents coming to you.”

Oliver stepped around behind the desk and
waited expectantly. Linkman tossed his coat
and hat on the chair and opened the drawer.
Too late, he saw his pistol exposed to view.

“Really, Dr. Linkman,” Oliver said slowly.
“I don’t quite understand this. The law for-
bids all nonmilitary citizens the possession of
weapons.” He stared hard at the doctor. “Nor
do I quite understand just why you feel the
need of an alarm, here in your private office.”

Falkayn stepped from the locker, a stubby
oxy-gun pointing at Oliver.

“Put up your hands, director!” he snapped.

“Falkayn! You are too zealous!” Linkman
shook with rage.

“If I may presume, sir,” retorted Falkayn,
“the snooping swine would have handled the
gun.”

Linkman calmed visibly.

“Perhaps. I apologize, major.”

The two bowed stiffly.

Oliver had not lost his calm. He looked
from one to the other, dominating them with
his quiet presence.

“May I ask, gentlemen,” he said, “what these
. . . these theotricals mean?”

Linkman raised his hand to eye level and
held it for a moment, staring somberly at his
bent fingers. Then he lashed out viciously,
smashing Oliver in the mouth. Oliver’s knees
buckled, but he did not fall. He pulled him-
self erect and wiped the blood off his swelling
lips.

“I was wrong about you, doctor. Wasn't I?”
His voice was almost conversational in tone.
“But will you explain just how I was wrong?”

Linkman rubbed his knuckles absently.

“He must be disposed of,” he muttered.
“But how? When? He will be missed. There
will be a search — ”

He paused. Then he reached for a phone.

He dialed a number, waited for a moment,
then the mechanical voice of the director’s
fone-man intoned into the receiver.

“The director is not here. The director is
not here. He left at six. May be at hL club
at seven. If not, try his residence. The
director is — ”

Linkman switched off the phone. He
grinned evilly at Oliver.

“You should have mentioned you were com-
ing here,” he gloated. “No one but the plant
doorman knows you are here.” He turned to
the major. “Take care of the doorman. Fal-
kayn. Put one of our men in his place.”

Falkayn saluted. Oliver’s eyes narrowed
when he saw the salute.

“Put the doorman’s body and that spy’s into
a furnace. Be sure you leave no traces.”

Linkman turned to Oliver and his eyes began
to glow.

“As for you, my dear director,” he sneered,
“you shall live — for a while. You shall even
start our flight with us!”

“Your flight?"

“Yes.” Linkman’s voice rose to a scream.
“For five years I’ve todied to you. I’ve gone
to school and earned your gracious approval
and become a good citizen! Do you know why
I’ve debased myself so? Why I’ve licked your
boots to get this factory? I’ll tell you! I’ve
found a few of the faithful left. I’ve brought
them here to work with me. We are building
a rocketship!”

“A rocketship?” Despite the pain it caused
him. Mark Oliver began to laugh.

Falkayn stepped forward and slapped him.

“You will not laugh when the Leader
speaks,” he said.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

46

“Yes.” Linkman seemed oblivious of the
interruption. “A rocketship to conquer space.
We’ll find a planet — make it ours — build a new
race. One that lives and dies by my Leader’s
teachings!”

Oliver gazed at him with horror-struck eyes.

“Man,” he said thickly, “you’re insane.”

Falkayn slapped him again, harder.

“You will not speak of him so,” he cried.
“He has become our Leader. And he will lead
us to a new world. We have built our ship,
here — right under your nose. I, myself, am
an engineer. I know the ship will work.”

“Our plans are well developed,” sneered
Linkman. “The ship is almost done. And, in
return for your kindness to me, I shall take
you with us — part of the way.”

Oliver gave him a long, searching look.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “I was wrong about
you. Linkman.” He wiped his lips with the
back of his hand. “I won’t plead with you,”
he went on, “or argue, for you are mad — mad
with the worst madness that ever infected man-
kind!”

They both started toward him, but he lifted
his hand and they halted. He grinned at
them.

“Creatures of habit,” he mocked. “Aren’t
you? And, I solemnly assure you, both of
you, your habit is and always will be — failure!”

Linkman smashed him across the face with
the gun barrel. As Oliver fell, Linkman kicked
him.

Falkayn gazed at him admiringly.

“The Leader would be proud of you, sir,”
he whispered.

At ten thirty in the morning, two days later,
Linkman walked briskly through the engine-
assembly room of his plant, nodding and smil-
ing to his workers. He checked the speed of
the conveyor belts, stopped to comment ad-
miringly on an assembled engine, clocked the
speed of the automatic cranes as they shuttled
from one assembly room to the next. Then he
walked out of the plant and across the yard
to the edge of the small testing field. He was
not surprised to see two men, in the uniform
of the Civil Guard, examining a row of planes
lined up for the arrival of the test pilots.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” he called.
“Checking specifications?”

They returned his greeting without warmth.
They were not civil servants, but old soldiers
who had received no training in toleration of
a former foe.

“We have been examining your plant,” one
of them said.

“Examining the plant? But I would have
been glad to escort you.”

“We were searching it — if you want to know
the truth.”

Dr. Linkman drew himself up. His tone
was a nice blend of injured dignity and weary
patience.

“But why, gentlemen? Are there any
charges against me?”

“Nope. No charges.” The Guard turned
to his companion. “Nothing here, Jed. Let’s
go.”

They tramped across the field and out of
the plant gate. Linkman grinned after them,
then bent his head slightly and stared at the
ground. He stamped his foot lightly.

“Poor, ignorant swine,” he laughed. “It
was right below you, all the time!”

He returned to the plant, walking unhur-
riedly. Through the assembly room he went
and an elevator took him from there to the
forge rooms, One floor down. Air conditioning
fought successfully with the blasting heat of
electric furnaces. Crane cars passed by over-
head, men ladled molten steel into buckets,
hammers smashed glowing blocks into new,
hardened shapes. All were too busy to note
the entrance of Linkman.

He strolled about carelessly for a moment,
then stepped around the side of a furnace. He
felt along the insulated wall of the furnace near
its junction with the side of the building. As
he probed, a section of the furnace wall turned
on an axis and Linkman slipped through the
opening revealed and passed down a short flight
of steps.

It was simple enough. During the war, a
bombproof cellar had been dug out below the
plant and there a duplicate factory had been
created, fitted with machinery and living quar-
ters for the workmen. It had been used, too,
when enemy bombs had shattered the plant
above.

When peace and the allied invaders came,
the surface plant had been recommissioned.
Its underground copy was stripped of its ma-
chinery and sealed up.

But Linkman knew about it. It was being
used.

He stepped at the foot of the stairs, as he
always did, and gazed silently at the monster
shape that gleamed silently in the dimness. He
lifted his hand in salute.

47

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

"You’ll leave this hole, soon,” he said softly,,
“and go where you belong, up through the sky
to the stars!”

He walked along the seamless hull, gazing
at the blast tubes, the steering vanes higher
than himself. A port was open and he climbed
in. The interior of the ship was a madhouse.
A pressure lift hoisted the fuel tanks while
workmen welded them into place. Men trotted
nimbly along the lower catwalk, bent double
with crates of supplies. Linkman made his
way to the upper catwalk and the pilothouse.

Major Falkayn turned from a calculator.

“Good morning, general! I’m glad to say
that we’re ahead of schedule.”

“Yes. I noticed the fuel tanks. How about
the fuel?”

“It is being mixed.”

“Good.”

Linkman went up to the instrument bank
and stared down at the rows of dials. He
fiddled absently with a control.

“I could wish some of our scientists had
remained faithful,” he muttered. “We could
use them, now.”

“Lieutenant Raeder was with the Fleet,”
Falkayn ventured. “He is thoroughly grounded
in astronomy.”

Linkman nodded.

“Yes. And Colonel Memsur was in Chemi-
cal Warfare.” He gazed around the crowded
room. “We will not be comfortable. It will
be a voyage for men.”

“But, of necessity, some women will take it,”
chuckled Falkayn.

“Yes. I am glad that some of our men are
married. Otherwise, there would have been
further complications.”

He stepped out of the room and back along
the catwalk.

“Some of the wives are young,” said Falkayn.
“And attractive.”

Linkman withered him with a glance.

"I shall beget no children,” he said. “None
now living shall take my place. As Fate
brought me to succeed the Leader, so shall I
leave it to Fate to bring forth my successor.”

He stopped and leaned over the rail. Below
him was the engine room. Men darted in and
out among the intricate machinery of the con-
verters, making last-minute adjustments on the
conduit system. Far to aft he could hear a
faint roar as the auxiliary motor, designed to
carry the ship past the friction of the atmos-
phere, was being tuned up.

“To think,” he said, “that, surrounded and

dogged by my enemies, I have built this in
only four months. Now, we must go. I have
the Leader’s intuition. It tells me that we
must hurry!”

Falkayn shrugged.

“Test the wiring hookup, set up gun em-
placements and — ”

“Gun emplacements! Why .have you de-
layed that?”

“They were not in the plans.”

“Oh, yes.” Linkman smiled grimly. “My
young brother would not have designed them.
I will speak tp him at once.”

Linkman went down the steps so fast he
almost lost his footing. Why, why did he
always have to ask and wheedle — instead of
commanding? Naturally, Franz would not
have designed armament — so he, Linkman,
must postpone until the last, dangerous mo-
ment to make known their desperate need.
Thank all the gods, the days of deception were
over.

He jerked open the door of Franz’s little
cubbyhole. The cripple turned on his high
stool and gave his brother an uncertain smile.
“Josef!” he exclaimed. “How are — ”

“Never mind,” the other rasped. “I have a
task for you. You must design gun emplace-
ments for each port. To fire when the port
is open, but the gun must have plenty of
protection. Make it simple.”

“Guns?”

“Yes, of coarse. One 6-inch gun to a side.
With two 107s at each of the other ports.”
“But, Josef!” Franz climbed down from his
stool and limped toward his brother. “Anna-,
ment is forbidden! The government would'
never accept our ship if it were designed for
war!”

Dr. Linkman lighted a cigar. He inhaled
deeply and blew the smoke at Franz. His lips
curled in a sardonic grin.

“My little Franz,” he murmured. “My little,
innocent brother.”

He stared hard at the younger man until
Franz’s eyes dropped guiltily.

“Did you think,” Linkman went on with
extreme gentleness, “that I was really develop-,
ing this ship for the government? That I was’
going to give the greatest thing in history to,
this government that has killed our Leader and
destroyed his teaching?”

“But I ... I thought — ”

“Yes?” Linkman took a step forward. "You
thought what?”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

48

“That you . . . you had changed. That you
believed in the new government — ”

“Ah!” Linkman threw back his head. “I
am a success, indeed, for I have deluded my
own brother.”

He stepped forward again, until he was very
close to Franz. He reached down and tilted
the other’s chin up.

“My boy,” he said softly, “this government
will never know of your ship — until it and
thousands like it come back from the stars to
destroy them. We leave in a few days. For
Venus or Mars — there to set up the Leader’s
government! In your ship ... in our ship for,
although you are weak and feeble, you are still
one of us!”

There was a discreet tap at the door. Link-
man turned. A grimy workman stood at rigid
attention.

“Your pardon, my general,” he said, “but
the prisoner demands to see you.”

“I’ll come along shortly,” Linkman an-
swered.

Franz stared wide-eyed as the workman
saluted, then withdrew.

“Yes,” grinned his brother. “An old soldier
of mine. As all of them are. They follow me
to a new world.”

He reached out and grasped the boy’s shoul-
ders, dug his fingers in, deep.

“You may come, too, if you like,” he said
softly. “Otherwise — well, the invaders must
not be able to follow me.” He gave the boy a
push. “Get busy on those gun mounts. I
must visit that prisoner — our great director,
Mr. Oliver!”

Franz slumped there against the table, dazed
and sick. His first reaction was one of fear
for his brother. His brother kidnaped Mr.
Oliver — they would execute him for that. No
— his brother was going to the Moon — or was
it Mars — and there would be war again.

He moved weakly toward the door.

They would take him with them. Take him
to the New World. He shook his head. No.
Long ago, before his people had lost their war,
he had known. Known with the wisdom of
childhood that only his brother’s eminence had
kept him, crippled Franz, alive. There was no
place for cripples in a state of supermen.

He peered out of the door. He did not know
Oliver. But Oliver’s government had allowed
him to go to school and study the mathematics
that he loved. He saw his brother go to the
door of an abandoned tool closet and open it.

Mark Oliver looked up and focused his eyes
on Linkman.

“I wish a drink of water,” he said slowly and
clearly.

“Sorry, I haven’t time.” Linkman laughed
at his own humor.

“Give me a drink. Then let me out of
here.”

Linkman’s laugh reverberated throughout
the tiny room.

Oliver forced himself to concentrate. He
licked his bruised lips with a swollen tongue.
It was hard to talk.

“You are really going through with this
madness?”

“Certainly.”

Oliver closed his eyes, then forced them
open.

“I have made a mistake in you,” he said
thickly. “A great mistake.”

“You are all such fools,” Linkman said
casually.

“Not . . . not such as you. You . . . will
always fail.”

“Even now?” chuckled Linkman.

“You will do something . . . make some mis-
take . . . your kind doesn’t know — ” Oliver
fainted. He did not feel it as Linkman kicked
him before he went out.

“I wish, general,” Blake, Director of Police,
said irritably, “you would stop that confounded
pacing!”

General McClernand took two steps to the
facsimile receiver, then three to the electrofile,
then two back to the director’s desk. He bent
over Blake’s desk and thrust out his lower lip.

“Then do something!” he bellowed.

Blake ran a hand through his gray hair.

“General,” he said patiently, “will you either
shut up or give me some evidence?”

He gestured toward Hastings, who was
manipulating a file separator.

“His report on the discharged workmen is
the only concrete, factual bit of knowledge
anybody has given me in the whole affair!
Anything new, son?”

Hastings shrugged.

“Not yet, sir.”

The director beat his palm with a hard fist.

“That’s it, General Mac. I have nothing to
go on!”

McClernand shoved a pipe in his mouth and
bit hard. The bowl came loose in his hand.
He hurled the wreckage to the floor.

“You . . . you’re just like the rest — soft!

49

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

You can’t do anything!”

Blake cursed.

“I put a secret operative on Linkman.
Against the law, of course, but you asked me
to. The man disappeared before turning in a
single report. Hastings has dug up enough in-
formation to bring before Mr. Oliver. But
Mr. Oliver disappears. So — again on your
say-so — I sent two Civil Guards to search Link-
man’s factory. They couldn’t find a thing!”
He leaned back in his chair and scowled at
McClernand.

“The whole thing rests upon your personal
dislike of Dr. Linkman. A dislike completely
unsupported by factual evidence!”

“Humph! Do you like him?”

“No. I served on your staff — remember?”
He grinned wryly. “But damn it. Genera!
Mac, we made these laws and we’ve got to
obey them!”

Hastings stopped feeding cards into the
separator.

“Ah, gentlemen,” he ventured, “speaking
outside the law, now, I think we are right in
suspecting Dr. Linkman. My investigations
have convinced me that his behavior mold is
too set, his basic inclinations too well directed,
to ever admit the possibility of fundamental
change in his character.”

“Which means, Mac,” came a tired voice
from the doorway, “that you can’t teach an
old dog new tricks. Just as you said.”

The three turned as though on a single axis.

Oliver leaned against the door jamb. His
battered lips tried to grin as they rushed to
him. McClernand reached him first.

“Where you hurt?” he growled.

Hastings pushed a chair forward.

“I’m all right,” Oliver said. “Some brandy,
Blake, if you please. Round up all the men
you can. Mac, call out the whole Civil Guard.
We’re going over to Zellerkraft — in a hurry!”
“So it was Linkman!” cried the general.
“Yes.” Oliver stood up. His eyes were
clear again. “Prepare for a shock, gentlemen.
Linkman’s crippled brother has designed a
rocketship for interplanetary travel. Linkman
has built the ship in his factory!”

They stared.

“Yes, it’s true.” Oliver rubbed his aching
head. “Linkman plans to conquer another
planet.”

Hastings nodded.

“Part of his proper pattern,” he said.

Blake clicked off the phone he’d been using.

“Car’s ready for us.” He smiled vaguely.
“I don’t believe this, chief, but I’m at your
orders.”

“I don’t believe it, either,” said McClernand.

“It’s true. I’ve seen it. I called at Link-
man’s office — just after he’d finished killing a
man — ”

“My man.” Blake’s voice was quiet. “Let’s
go.”

“Not Oliver,” grunted McClernand.

Oliver took a shaky step toward the door.

“Yes,” he said firmly. “I’m going. This is
partly my fault — and wholly our fault. I im-
agine our engineers laughed at the crippled
boy when he submitted his designs.”

He took another, firmer step.

“I can make it. No arguments, Mac. Re-
member, I rank you.”

Their car spiraled up to a traffic-tree span
and shot along toward the factory.

“Just what did happen to you?” asked Blake.

“They held me prisoner in an abandoned
lower level of the plant,” Oliver answered.
“The ship’s there. I think, somehow, it will
work.”

“To think they should have invented it,”
murmured Hastings.

“No.” Oliver leaned out of the car window
and took a deep breath of the night air. “The
boy is one of us. He thought he was building
it for us — to prove it could be done, you know.
Today, his brother told him the truth. To-
night, he helped me get away.”

“Here we are,” said Blake. “There’s a car
of Guards!”

McClernand peered over the side.

“Take the main ramp off the span,” he said.
“I see some people out on their testing field.”

“They can’t be starting already!” cried
Oliver. “Hurry, Blake!”

They piled out of the car before it was fully
stopped. Blake gave a low whistle and the
Guards came running up. The great gate was
locked, but a flamer blasted it. They surged
through and rushed toward the building.

“Wait!” called Blake. “What’s that on the
ground?”

“No lights, now,” ordered McClernand.

“I can see," grunted Oliver. “It’s young
Linkman.”

Despite the pain in his ribs he knelt by the
prone figure. The cripple lifted his head a
, little.

“Director!” he cried weakly. “Josef forced
me to tell ... I helped you . . , then he shot me.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

50

They are taking my ship . . . auxiliary motor
only until they . . . they — ”

The twisted body collapsed. Oliver reached
forward and touched the big head. Then he
rose to his feet.

“Come on,” he said.

There was a throbbing roar from the other
side of the building. The gleaming snout of
the rocketship raised itself slowly above the
roofline. They ran around the side of the
building to the testing field. But they were
too late.

“Fire, damn it!” bellowed McClernand.

The Guards gave a ragged volley. They
could not miss, but the small shells exploded
harmlessly against the sides of the ship.

“After all, they built it to ward off meteors,”
said Oliver.

“Some of you phone Aerial Defense,” barked
McClernand. “Blake, have a man get through
to Grauheim Field and have every ship go up.”

“Go ahead,” Oliver said, “but we’ll never
catch them. Once they get high enough for
rockets — ”

“Then to the devil with them!” snarled Mc-
Clernand.

Oliver watched the ship lunge skyward,
auxiliary props making a furious drone.

“No,” he said. “Don’t you see, Mac, they’ll
be back!”

“Bah, they’ll never make it!”

“Yes, they will. Look what Linkman him-
self has done. They’ll make it — unless we stop
them again.”

They stared at each other, each with eyes
that saw something other than the man before
him. A sky filled with wheeling, diving planes,
raining bombs on this white, immaculate city

beyond the recognition of peaceful eyes.

Oliver turned away slowly and his eye
caught the row of new planes. Linkman had
not bothered to cover them against the dew.
He stared at them. Mail planes, standing sleek
and trim, lined up for an initial test. Some-
thing clicked in his mind. He looked over his
shoulder at the giant rocketship, then ran to-
ward the planes.

“Hey!” yelled McClernand.

He took a step, then broke into a run. But
he was old. Oliver reached a plane, slid open
a port and jumped in. The elevator motor
roared and the plane shot up.

McClernand stopped, panting. Blake and
Hastings came alongside him and stared sky-
ward.

“What’s he going to do?” asked Blake, al-
though he knew.

“Ram it, of course.” Hastings’ voice was
as expressionless as ever. “Only way to stop it,
you know.”

The plane’s drive turned over, then roared
into life. It seemed to leap forward in the air.
A Guard came out of the plant office, stopped
short and looked up. Searchlights went on
over the city, picked out the rocketship easily.
The plane, tiny now, sped after it.

They saw the plane go high, above the
ship, and poise there.

Then it dived.

For one moment they saw it on its way.
Then the two met with a faint crash. The
rocketship staggered and the smashed plane
fell off, toward the earth. The big ship nosed
down, seemed to recover, then, with an awful
roar, it exploded.

The watchers turned away.

It was the unemotional Hastings who pro-
nounced Oliver’s epitaph.

“Now,” he said, “we must build one.”

they had helped build. This, and all other
cities, smashed by tanks, scarred with bombs

THE END.

AST— 4R

51

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

MIMSY WERE THE
BOROGOVES

By Lewis Padgett

THIS is the first science-fiction story that I know of which
has considered the children’s toys of the far future. Simple lit-
tle item — a time-machine inventor trying out his gadget send-
ing back a few discarded children’s toys. But — what toys!

Illustrated by Kolliker

There’s no use trying to describe either Un-
thahorsten or his surroundings, because, for
one thing, a good many million years had
passed since 1942 Anno Domini, and, for -an-
other, Unthahorsten wasn’t on Earth, techni-
cally speaking. He was doing the equivalent
of standing in the equivalent of a laboratory.
He was preparing to test his time machine.

Having turned on the power, Unthahorsten
suddenly realized that the Box was empty.
Which wouldn’t do at all. The device needed
a control, a three-dimensional solid which
would react to the conditions of another age.
Otherwise Unthahorsten couldn’t tell, on the
machine’s return, where and when it had been.
Whereas a solid in the Box would automati-
cally be subject to the entropy and cosmic-
ray bombardment of the other era, and Un-
thahorsten could measure the changes, both
qualitative and quantitative, when the ma-
chine returned. The Calculators could then
get to work and, presently, tell Unthahorsten
that the Box had briefly visited 1,000,000 A. D.,
1,000 A. D., or 1 A. D., as the case might be.

Not that it mattered, except to Untha-

horsten. But he was childish in many re-
spects.

There was little time to waste. The Box
was beginning to glow and shiver. Untha-
horsten stared around wildly, fled into the
next glossatch, and groped in a storage bin
there. He came up with an armful of peculiar-
looking stuff. Uh-huh. Some of the dis-
carded toys of his son Snowen, which the boy
had brought with him when he had passed
over from Earth, after mastering the necessary
technique. Well, Snowen needed this junk
no longer. He was conditioned, and had put
away childish things. Besides, though Untha-
horsten’s wife kept the toys for sentimental
reasons, the experiment was more important.

Unthahorsten, left the glossatch and dumped
the assortment into the Box, slamming the
cover shut just before the warning signal
flashed. The Box went away. The manner
of its departure hurt Unthahorsten’s eyes.

He waited.

And he waited.

Eventually he gave up and built another
time machine, with identical results. Snowen

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

52

hadn’t been annoyed by the loss of his old
toys, nor had Snowen’s mother, so Untha-
horsten cleaned out the bin and dumped the
remainder of his son’s childhood relics in the
second time machine’s Box.

According to his calculations, this one should
have appeared on Earth, in the latter part
of the nineteenth century, A. D. If that ac-
tually occurred, the device remained there.

Disgusted. Unthahorsten decided to make no

more time machines. But the mischief had
been done. There were two of them, and the
first—

Scott Paradine found it while he was play-
ing hooky from the Glendale Grammar
School. There was a geography test that day,
and Scott saw no sense in memorizing place
names — which in 1942 was a fairly' sensible
theory. Besides, it was the sort of warn

S3

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

spring day, with a touch of coolness in the
breeze, which invited a boy to lie down in
a field and stare at the occasional clouds till
he fell asleep. Nuts to geography! Scott
dozed.

About noon he got hungry, so his stocky
legs carried him to a nearby store. There he
invested his small hoard with penurious care
and a sublime disregard for his gastric juices.
He went down by the creek to feed.

Having finished his supply of cheese, choco-
late, and cookies, and having drained the soda-
pop bottle to its dregs, Scott caught tadpoles
and studied them with a certain amount of
scientific curiosity. He did not persevere.
Something tumbled down the bank and thud-
ded into the muddy ground near the water, so
Scott, with a wary glance around, hurried to
investigate.

It was a box. It was, in fact, the Box. The
gadgetry hitched to it meant little to Scott,
though he wondered why it was so fused and
burnt. He pondered. With his jackknife he
pried and probed, his tongue sticking out from
a corner of his mouth — Hm-m-m. Nobody
was around. Where had the box come from?
Somebody must have left it here, and sliding
soil had dislodged it from its precarious perch.

“That’s a helix,” Scott decided, quite er-
roneously. It was helical, but it wasn’t a
helix, because of the dimensional warp in-
volved. Had the thing been a model air-
plane, no matter how complicated, it would
have held few mysteries to Scott. As it was,
a problem was posed. Something told Scott
that the device was a lot more complicated
than the spring motor he had deftly disman-
tled last Friday.

But no boy has ever left a box unopened,
unless forcibly dragged away. Scott probed
deeper. The angles on this thing were funny.
Short circuit, probably. That was why —uh!
The knife slipped. Scott sucked his thumb
and gave vent to experienced blasphemy.

Maybe it was a music box.

Scott shouldn’t have felt depressed. The
gadgetry would have given Einstein a head-
ache and driven Steinmetz raving mad. The
trouble was, of course, that the box had not
yet completely entered the space-time con-
tinuum where Scott existed, and therefore it
could not be opened. At any rate, not till
Scott used a convenient rock to hammer the
helical non-helix into a more convenient po-
sition.

He hammered it, in fact, from its contact

point with the fourth dimension, releasing the
space-time torsion it had been maintaining.
There was a brittle snap. The box jarred
slightly, and lay motionless, no longer only
partially in existence. Scott opened it easily
now.

The soft, woven helmet was the first thing
that caught his eye, but he discarded that
without much interest. It was just a cap.
Next he lifted a square, transparent crystal
block, small enough to cup in his palm — much
too small to contain the maze of apparatus
within it. In a moment Scott had solved that
problem. The crystal was a sort of magni-
fying glass, vastly enlarging the things inside
the block. Strange things they were, too.
Miniature people, for example —

They moved. Like clockwork automatons,
though much more smoothly. It was rather
like watching a play. Scott was interested in
their costumes, but fascinated by their actions.
The tiny people were deftly building a house.
Scott wished it would catch fire, so he could
see the people put it out.

Flames licked up from the half-completed
structure. The automatons, with a great deal
of odd apparatus, extinguished the blaze.

It didn’t take Scott long to catch on. But
he was a little worried. The manikins would
obey his thoughts. By the time he discov-
ered that, he was frightened, and threw the
cube from him.

Halfway up the bank, he reconsidered and
returned. The crystal block lay partly in the
water, shining in the sun. It was a toy; Scott
sensed that, with the unerring instinct of a
child. But he didn’t pick it up immediately.
Instead, he returned to the box and investi-
gated its remaining contents.

He found some really remarkable gadgets.
The afternoon passed all too quickly. Scott
finally put the toys back in the box and
lugged it home, grunting and puffing. He was
quite red-faced by the time he arrived at the
kitchen door.

His find he hid at the back of a closet in
his own room upstairs. The crystal cube he
slipped into his pocket, which already bulged
with string, a coil of wire, two pennies, a wad
of tinfoil, a grimy defense stamp, and a chunk
of feldspar. Emma, Scott’s two-year-old sister,
waddled unsteadily in from the hall and said
hello.

“Hello, Slug,” Scott nodded, from his alti-
tude of seven years and some months. He

£T4

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

patronized Emma shockingly, but she didn’t
know the difference. Small, plump, and wide-
eyed, she flopped down on the carpet and
stared dolefully at her shoes.

“Tie ’em, Scotty, please?”

“Sap,” Scott told her kindly, but knotted
the laces. “Dinner ready yet?”

Emma nodded.

“Let’s see your hands.” For a wonder they
were reasonably clean, though probably not
aseptic. Scott regarded his own paws
thoughtfully and, grimacing, went to the bath-
room, where he made a sketchy toilet. The
tadpoles had left traces.

Dennis Paradine and his wife Jane were
having a cocktail before dinner, downstairs in
the living room. He was a youngish, middle-
aged man with gray-shot hair and a thinnish,
prim-mouthed face; he taught philosophy at
the university. Jane was small, neat, dark,
and very pretty. She sipped her Martini and
said:

“New shoes. Like ’em?”

“Here’s to crime,” Paradine muttered ab-
sently. “Huh? Shoes? Not now. Wait till
I’ve finished this. I had a bad day.”
“Exams?”

“Yeah. Flaming youth aspiring toward man-
hood. I hope they die. In considerable agony.
Irish’ Allah!”

“I want the olive,” Jane requested.

“I know,” Paradine said despondently. “It’s
been years since I’ve tasted one myself. In
a Martini, I mean. Even if I put six of ’em
in your glass, you’re still not satisfied.”

“I want yours. Blood brotherhood. Sym-
bolism. That’s why.”

Paradine regarded his wife balefully and
crossed his long legs. “You sound like one
of my students.”

“Like that hussy Betty Dawson, perhaps?”
Jane unsheathed her nails. “Does she still
leer at you in that offensive way?”

“She does. The child is a neat psychological
problem. Luckily she isn’t mine. If she
were — ” Paradine nodded significantly. “Sex
consciousness and too many movies. I sup-
pose she still thinks she can get a passing grade
by showing me her knees. Which are, by the
way, rather bony.”

Jane adjusted her skirt with an air of com-
placent pride. Paradine uncoiled himself and
poured fresh Martinis. “Candidly, I don’t
see the point of teaching those apes philosophy.
They’re all at the wrong age. Their babit-

pattems, their methods of thinking, are
already laid down. They’re horribly conserva-
tive, not that they’d admit it. The only peo-
ple who can understand philosophy are mature
adults or kids like Emma and Scotty.”

“Well, don’t enroll Scotty in your course,”
Jane requested. “He isn’t ready to be a Phil-
osophiae Doctor. I hold no brief for child
geniuses, especially when it’s my son.”

“Scotty would probably be better at it than
Betty Dawson,” Paradine grunted.

“ ‘He died an enfeebled old dotard at five,’ ”
Jane quoted dreamily. “I want your olive.”
“Here. By the way, T like the shoes.”
“Thank you. Here’s Rosalie. Dinner?”
“It’s all ready, Miz Pa’dine,” said Rosa-
lie, hovering. “I’ll call Miss Emma V Mista’
Scotty.”

“I’ll get ’em.” Paradine put his head into
the next room and roared, “Kids! Come and
get it!”

Small feet scuttered down the stairs, Scott
dashed into view, scrubbed and shining, a re-
bellious cowlick aimed at the zenith. Emma
pursued, levering herself carefully down the
steps. Halfway she gave up the attempt to
descend upright and reversed, finishing the
task monkey-fashion, her small behind giving
an impression of marvelous diligence upon the
work in hand. Paradine watched, fascinated
by the spectacle, till he was hurled back by
the impaet of his son’s body.

“Hi, dad!” Scott shrieked.

Paradine recovered himself and regarded
Scott with dignity. “Hi, yourself. Help me
in to dinner. You’ve dislocated at least one
of my hip joints.”

But Scott was already tearing into the next
room, where he stepped on Jane’s new shoes
in an ecstasy of affection, burbled an apology,
and rushed off to find his place at the dinner
table. Paradine cocked up an eyebrow as he
followed, Emma’s pudgy hand desperately
gripping his forefinger.

“Wonder what the young devil’s been up
to?”

“No good, probably,” Jane sighed. “Hello,
darling. Let’s see your ears.”

“They’re clean. Mickey licked ’em.”

“Well, that Airedale’s tongue is far eleaner
than your ears,” Jane pondered, making a
brief examination. “Still, as long as you can
hear, the dirt’s only superficial.”

“Fisshul?”

“Just a little, that means.” Jane dragged

55

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

her daughter to the table and inserted her
legs into a high chair. Only lately had Emma
graduated to the dignity of dining with the
rest of the family, and she was, as Paradine
remarked, all eat up with pride by the pros-
pect. Only babies spilled food, Emma had
been told. As a result, she took such pains-
taking care in conveying her spoon to her
mouth that Paradine got the jitters whenever
he watched.

“A conveyer belt would be the thing for
Emma,” he suggested, pulling out a chair for
Jane. “Small buckets of spinach arriving at
her face at stated intervals.”

Dinner proceeded uneventfully until Para-
dine happened to glance at Scott’s plate.
“Hello, there. Sick? Been stuffing yourself
at lunch?”

Scott thoughtfully examined the food still
left before him. “I’ve had all I need, dad,”
he explained.

“You usually eat all you can hold, and a
great deal more,” Paradine said. “I know
growing boys need several tons of foodstuff
a day, but you’re below par tonight. Feel
O. K.?”

“Uh-huh. Honest, I’ve had all I need.”

“All you want?”

“Sure. I eat different.”

“Something they taught you at school?”
Jane inquired.

Scott shook his head solemnly.

“Nobody taught me. I found it out myself.
I use spit.”

“Try again,” Paradine suggested. “It’s the
wrong word.”

“Uh . . . s-saliva. Hm-m-m?”

“Uh-huh. More pepsin? Is there pepsin
in the salivary juices, Jane? I forget.”
“There’s poison in mine,” Jane remarked.
“Rosalie’s left lumps in the mashed potatoes
again.”

But Paradine was interested. “You mean
you’re getting everything possible out of your
food — no wastage — and eating less?”

Scott thought that over. “I guess so. It’s
not just the sp . . . saliva. I sort of measure
how much to put in my mouth at once, and
what stuff to mix up. I dunno. I just do
it.”

“Hm-m-m,” said Paradine, making a note
to check up later. “Rather a revolutionary
idea.” Kids often get screwy notions, but this
one might not be so far off the beam. He
pursed his lips. “Eventually I suppose people
will eat quite differently — I mean the way

they eat, as well as what. What they eat, I
mean. Jane, our son shows signs of becoming
a genius.”

“Oh?”

“It’s a rather good point in dietetics he
just made. Did you figure it out yourself,
Scott?”

“Sure,” the boy said, and really believed
it.

“Where’d you get the idea?”

“Oh, I — ” Scott wriggled. “I dunno. It
doesn’t mean much, I guess.”

Paradine was unreasonably disappointed.
“But surely — ”

“S-s-s-spit!” Emma shrieked, overcome by
a sudden fit of badness. “Spit!” She at-
tempted to demonstrate, but succeeded only in
dribbling into her bib.

With a resigned air Jane rescued and re-
proved her daughter, while Paradine eyed
Scott with rather puzzled interest. But it was
not till' after dinner, in the living room, that
anything further happened.

“Any homework?”

“N-no,” Scott said, flushing guiltily. To
cover his embarrassment he took from his
pocket a gadget he had found in the box, and
began to unfold it. The result resembled a
tesseract, strung with beads. Paradine didn’t
see it at first, but Emma did. She wanted to
play with it.

“No. Lay off, Slug,” Scott ordered. “You
can watch me.” He fumbled with the beads,
making soft, interested noises. Emma ex-
tended a fat forefinger and yelped.

“Scotty,” Paradine said warningly.

“I didn’t hurt her.”

“Bit me. It did,” Emma mourned.

Paradine looked up. He frowned, staring.
What in —

“Is that an abacus?” he asked. “Let’s see
it, please.”

Somewhat unwillingly Scott brought the
gadget across to his father’s chair. Paradine
blinked. The “abacus,” unfolded, was more
than a foot square, composed of thin, rigid
wires that interlocked here and there. On the
wires the colored beads were strung. They
could be slid back and forth, and from one
support to another, even at the points of
jointure. But — a pierced bead couldn’t cross
interlocking wires —

So, apparently, they weren’t pierced. Para-
dine looked closer. Each small sphere had a
deep groove running around it, so that it could

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

56

be revolved and slid along the wire at the same
time. Paradine tried to pull one free. It clung
as though magnetically. Iron? It looked more
like plastic.

The framework itself — Paradine wasn’t a
mathematician. But the angles formed by the
wires were vaguely shocking, in their ridicu-
lous lack of Euclidean logic. They were a
maze. Perhaps that’s what the gadget was —
a puzzle.

“Where’d you get this?”

“Uncle Harry gave it to me,” Scott said on
the spur of the moment. “Last Sunday, when
he came over.” Uncle Harry was out of town,
a circumstance Scott well knew. At the age
of seven, a boy soon learns that the vagaries
of adults follow a certain definite pattern, and
that they are fussy about the donors of gifts.
Moreover, Uncle Harry would not return for
several weeks; the expiration of that period
was unimaginable to Scott, or, at least, the
fact that his lie would ultimately be discov-
ered meant less to him than the advantages of
being allowed to keep the toy.

Paradine found himself growing slightly con-
fused as he attempted to manipulate the beads.
The angles were vaguely illogical. It was like
a puzzle. This red bead, if slid along this wire
to that junction, should reach there — but it
didn’t. A maze, odd, but no doubt instruc-
tive. Paradine had a well-founded feeling that
he’d have no patience with the thing him-
self.

Scott did, however, retiring to a corner and
sliding beads around with much fumbling and
grunting. The beads did sting, when Scott
chose the wrong ones or tried to slide them
in the wrong direction. At last he crowed ex-
ultantly.

"I did it, dad!”

“Eh? What? Let’s see.” The device
looked exactly the same to Paradine, but Scott
pointed and beamed.

“I made it disappear.”

“It’s still there?”

“That blue bead. It’s gone now.”

Paradine didn’t believe that, so he merely
snorted. Scott puzzled over the framework
again. He experimented. This time there
were no shocks, even slight. The abacus had
showed him the correct method. Now it was
up to him to do it on his own. The bizarre
angles of the wires seemed a little less con-
fusing now, somehow.

It was a most instructive toy —

It worked, Scott thought, rather like the
crystal cube. Reminded of that gadget, he
took it from his pocket and relinquished the
abacus to Emma, who was struck dumb with
joy. She fell to work sliding the beads, this
time without protesting against the shocks —
which, indeed, were very minor — and, being
imitative, she managed to make a bead dis-
appear - almost as quickly as had Scott. The
blue bead reappeared — but Scott didn’t no-
tice. He had forethoughtfully retired into an
angle of the chesterfield and an overstaffed
chair and amused himself with the cube.

There were little people inside the thing,
tiny manikins much enlarged by the magni-
fying properties of the crystal, and they moved,
all right. They built a house. It caught fire,
with realistic-seeming flames, and stood by
waiting. Scott puffed urgently. “Put it out!”

But nothing happened. Where was that
queer fire engine, with revolving arms, that had
appeared before? Here it was. It came sail-
ing into the picture and stopped. Scott urged
it on.

This was fun. Like putting on a play, only
more real. The little people did what Scott
told them, inside of his head. If he made a
mistake, they waited till he’d found the right
■ way. They even posed new problems for
him —

The cube, too, was a most instructive toy.
It was teaching Scott, with alarming rapidity
— and teaching him very entertainingly. But
it gave him no really new knowledge as yet.
He wasn’t ready. Later — later —

Emma grew tired of the abacus and went in
search of Scott. She couldn’t find him, even
in his room, but once there the contents of
the closet intrigued her. She discovered the
box. It contained treasure-trove — a doll,
which Scott had already noticed but discarded
with a sneer. Squealing, Emma brought the
doll downstairs, squatted in the middle of the
floor, and began to take it apart.

“Darling! What’s that?”

“Mr. Bear!”

Obviously it wasn’t Mr. Bear, who was
blind, earless, but comforting in his soft fat-
ness. But all dolls were named Mr. Bear to
Emma.

Jane Paradine hesitated. . “Did you take
that from some other little girl?”

“I didn’t. She’s mine.”

Scott came out from his hiding place, thrust-

S7

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

ing the cube into his pocket. “Uh — that’s
from Uncle Harry.”

“Did Uncle Harry give that to you, Emma?”

“He gave it to me for Emma,” Scott put in
hastily, adding another stone to his founda-
tion of deceit. “Last Sunday.”

“You’ll break it, dear.”

Emma brought the doll to her mother. “She
comes apart. See?”

“Oh? It . . . ugh!” Jane sucked in her
breath. Paradine looked up quickly.

“What’s up?” .

She brought the doll over to him, hesitated,
and then went into the dining room, giving
Paradine a significant glance. He followed,
closing the door. Jane had already placed the
doll on the cleared table.

“This isn’t very nice, is it, Denny?”

“Hm-m-m.” It was rather unpleasant, at
first glance. One might have expected an ana-
tomical dummy in a medical school, but a
child’s doll —

The thing came apart in sections, skin, mus-
cles, organs, miniature but quite perfect, as
far as Paradine could see. He was interested.
“Dunno. Such things haven’t the same con-
notations to a kid — ”

“Look at that liver. Is it a liver?”

“Sure. Say, I . . . this is funny.”
“What?”

“It isn’t anatomically perfect, after all.”
Paradine pulled up a chair. “The digestive
tract’s too short. No large intestine. No ap-
pendix, either,”

“Should Emma have a thing like this?”

“I wouldn’t mind having it myself,” Para-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

58

dine said. “Where on earth did Harry pick
it up? No, I don’t see any harm in it. Adults
are conditioned to react unpleasantly to in-
nards. Kids don’t. They figure they’re solid
inside, like a potato. Emma can get a sound
working knowledge of physiology from this
doll.”

“But what are those? Nerves?”

“No, these are the nerves. Arteries here;
veins here. Funny sort of aorta — ” Paradine
looked baffled. “That . . . what’s Latin for
network? Anyway . . . huh? Rita ? Rata?”

“Rales,” Jane suggested at random.

“That’s a sort of breathing,” Paradine said
_ crushingly. “I can’t figure out what this lumi-
nous network of stuff is. It goes all through
the body, like nerves.”

“Blood.”

“Nope. Not circulatory, not neural —
funny! It seems to be hooked up with the
lungs.”

They became engrossed, puzzling over the
strange doll. It was made with remarkable
perfection of detail, and that in itself was
strange, in view of the physiological variation
from the norm. “Wait’ll I get that Gould,”
Paradine said, and presently was comparing
the doll with anatomical charts. He learned
little, except to increase his bafflement.

But it was more fun than a jigsaw puzzle.

Meanwhile, in the adjoining room, Emma
was sliding the beads to and fro in the aba-
cus. The motions didn’t seem so strange now.
Even when the beads vanished. She could al-
most follow that new direction — almost —

Scott panted, staring into the crystal cube
and mentally directing, with many false starts,
the building of a structure somewhat more
complicated than the one which had been de-
stroyed by fire. He, too, was learning — being
conditioned —

Paradine’s mistake, from a completely an-
thropomorphic standpoint, was that he didn’t
get rid of the toys instantly. He did not real-
ize their significance, and, by the time he did,
the progression of circumstances had got well
under way. Uncle Harry remained out of
town, so Paradine couldn’t check with him.
Too, the midterm exams were on, which meant
arduous mental effort and complete exhaus-
tion at night; and Jane was slightly ill for a
week or so. Emma and Scott had free rein
with the toys.

“What,” Scott asked his father one evening,
“is a wabe, dad?”

“Wave?”

He hesitated. “I . . don’t think so. Isn’t
wabe right?”

“Wab is Scot for web. That it?”

“I don’t see how,” Scott muttered, and wan-
dered off, scowling, to amuse himself with the
abacus. He was able to handle it quite deftly
now. But, with the instinct of children for
avoiding interruptions, he and Emma usually
played with the toys in private. Not obvi-
ously, of course — but the more intricate experi-
ments were never performed under the eye of
an adult.

Scott was learning fast. What he now saw
in the crystal cube had little relationship to
the original simple problems. But they were
fascinatingly technical. Had Scott realized
that his education was being guided and super-
vised — though merely mechanically— he would
probably have lost interest. As it was, his
initiative was never quashed.

Abacus, cube, doll — and other toys the chil-
dren found in the box —

Neither Paradine nor Jane guessed how
much of an effect the contents of the time
machine were having on the kids. How could
they? Youngsters are instinctive dramatists,
for purposes of self-protection. They have not
yet fitted themselves to the exigencies — to
them partially inexplicable — of a mature
world. Moreover, their lives are complicated
by human variables. They are told by one
person that playing in the mud is permissible,
but that, in their excavations, they must not
uproot flowers or small trees. Another adult
vetoes mud per se. The Ten Commandments
are not carved on stone; they vary, and chil-
dren are helplessly dependent on the caprice
of those who give them birth and feed and
clothe them. And tyrannize. The young ani-
mal does not resent that benevolent tyranny,
for it is an essential part of nature. He is,
however, an individualist, and maintains his
integrity by a subtle, passive fight.

Under the eyes of an adult he changes.
Like an actor on-stage, when he remembers, he
strives to please, and also to attract atten-
tion to himself. Such attempts are not un-
known to maturity. But adults are less ob-
vious — to other adults.

It is difficult to admit that children lack
subtlety. Children are different from the ma-
ture animal because they think in another
way. We can more or less easily pierce the
pretenses they set up — but they can do the
same to us. Ruthlessly a child can destroy the

59

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

pretenses of an adult. Iconoelasm is their pre-
rogative.

Foppishness, for example. The amenities of
social intercourse, exaggerated not quite to
absurdity. The gigolo —

“Such savoir faire! Such punctilious cour-
tesy!” The dowager and the blond young
thing are often impressed. Men have less
pleasant comments to make. But the child
goes to the root of the matter.

“You’re silly!"

How can an immature human understand
the complicated system of social relationships?
He can’t. To him, an exaggeration of natural
courtesy is silly. In his functional structure
of life-patterns, it is rococo. He is an egotistic
little animal, who cannot visualize himself in
the position of another — certainly not an adult.
A self-contained, almost perfect natural unit,
his wants supplied by others, the child is much
like a unicellular creature floating in the blood
stream, nutriment carried to him, waste prod-
ucts carried away —

From the standpoint of logic, a child is
rather horribly perfect. A baby may be even
more perfect, but so alien to an adult that
only superficial standards of comparison apply.
The thought processes of an infant are com-
pletely unimaginable. But babies think, even
before birth. In the womb they move and
sleep, not entirely through instinct. We are
conditioned to react rather peculiarly to the
idea that a nearly-viable embryo may think.
We are surprised, shocked into laughter, and
repelled. Nothing human is alien.

But a baby is not human. An embryo is
far less human.

That, perhaps, was why Emma learned more
from the toys than did Scott. He could com-
municate his thoughts, of course; Emma could
not, except in cryptic fragments. The matter
of the scrawls, for example —

Give a young child pencil and paper, and
he will draw something which looks different
to him than to an adult. The absurd scrib-
bles have little resemblance to a fire engine,
but it is a fire engine, to a baby. Perhaps it
is even three-dimensional. Babies think dif-
ferently and see differently.

Paradine brooded over that, reading his
paper one evening and watching Emma and
Scott communicate. Scott was questioning his
sister. Sometimes he did it in English. More
often he had resource to gibberish and sign

language. Emma tried to reply, but the handi-
cap was too great.

Finally Scott got pencil and paper. Emma
liked that. Tongue in cheek, she laboriously
wrote a message. Scott took the paper, ex-
amined it, and scowled.

“That isn’t right, Emma,” he said.

Emma nodded vigorously. She seized the
pencil again and made more scrawls. Scott
puzzled for a while, finally smiled rather hesi-
tantly, and got up. He vanished into the hall.
Emma returned to the abacus.

Paradine rose and glanced down at the
paper, with some mad thought that Emma
might abruptly have mastered calligraphy.
But she hadn’t. The paper was covered with
meaningless scrawls, of a type familiar to any
parent. Paradine pursed his lips.

It might be a graph showing the mental
variations of a manic-depressive cockroach,
but probably wasn’t. Still, it no doubt had
meaning to Emma. Perhaps the scribble rep-
resented Mr. Bear.

Scott returned, looking pleased. He met
Emma’s gaze and nodded. Paradine felt a
twinge of curiosity.

“Secrets?”

“Nope. Emma . . . uh . . . asked me to do
something for her.”

“Oh.” Paradine, recalling instances of ba-
bies who had babbled in unknown tongues
and baffled linguists, made a note to pocket
the paper when the kids had finished with it.
The next day he showed the scrawl to Elkins
at the university. Elkins had a sound working
knowledge of many unlikely languages, but
he chuckled over Emma’s venture into litera-
ture.

“Here’s a free translation, Dennis. Quote.

I don’t know what this means, but I kid the
hell out of my father with it. Unquote.”

The two men laughed and went off to their
classes. But later Paradine was to remember
the incident. Especially after he met Hollo-
way. Before that, however, months were to
pass, and the situation to develop even fur-
ther toward its climax.

Perhaps Paradine and Jane had evinced too
much interest in the toys. Emma and Scott
took to keeping them hidden, playing with
them only in private. They never did it
overtly, but with a certain unobtrusive cau-
tion. Nevertheless, Jane especially was some-
what troubled.

She spoke to Paradine about it one evening.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

60

“That doll Harry gave Emma.”

“Yeah?”

“I was downtown today and tried to find
out where it came from. No soap.”

“Maybe Harry bought it in New York.”
Jane was unconvinced. “I asked them about
the other things, too. They showed me their
stock — Johnson’s a big store, you know. But
there’s nothing like Emma’s abacus.”

“Hm-m-m.” Paradine wasn’t much inter-
ested. They had tickets for a show that night,
and it was getting late. So the subject was
dropped for the nonce.

Later it cropped up again, when a neighbor
telephoned Jane.

“Scotty’s never been like that, Denny. Mrs.
Burns said he frightened the devil out of her
Francis.”

“Francis? A little fat bully of a punk, isn’t
he? Like his father. I broke Burns’ nose for
him once, when we were sophomores.”

“Stop boasting and listen,” Jane said, mix-
ing a highball. “Scott showed Francis some-
thing that scared him. Hadn’t you better — ”
“I suppose so.” Paradine listened. Noises
in the next room told him the whereabouts
of his son. “Scotty!”

“Bang,” Scott said, and appeared smiling.
“I killed ’em all. Space pirates. You want
me, dad?”

“Yes. If you don’t mind leaving the space
pirates unburied for a few minutes. What
did you do to Francis Burns?”

Scott’s blue eyes reflected incredible candor.
“Huh?”

“Try hard. You can remember, I’m sure.”
“Uh. Oh, that. I didn’t do nothing.”
“Anything,” Jane corrected absently.
“Anything. Honest. I just let him look
into my television set, and it . . , it scared
him.”

“Television set?”

Scott produced the crystal cube. “It isn’t
ideally that. See?”

Paradine examined the gadget, startled by
the magnification. All he could see, though,
was a maze of meaningless colored designs.
“Uncle Harry — ”

Paradine reached for the telephone. Scott
gulped. “Is ... is Uncle Harry back in town?”
“Yeah.”

“Well, I gotta take a bath.” Scott headed
for the door. Paradine met Jane’s gaze ar.d
nodded significantly.

Harry was home, but disclaimed all knowl-
edge of the peculiar toys. Rather grimly,

Paradine requested Scott to bring down from
his room all of the playthings. Finally they
lay in a row on the table, cube, abacus, doll,
helmetlike cap, several other mysterious con-
traptions. Scott was cross-examined. He lied
valiantly for a time, but broke down at last
and bawled, biccuping his confession.

“Get the box these things came in,” Para-
dine ordered. “Then head for bed.”

“Are you . . . hup! . . . gonna punish me,
daddy?”

“For playing hooky and lying, yes. You
know the rules. No more shows for two weeks.
No sodas for the same period.”

Scott gulped. “You gonna keep my things?”
“I don’t know yet.”

“Well . . . g’night, daddy. G’night, mom.”'

After the small figure had gone upstairs,
Paradine dragged a chair to the table and
carefully scrutinized the box. He poked
thoughtfully at the fused gadgetry. Jane
watched.

“What is it, Denny?”

“Dunno. Who’d leave a box of toys down
by the creek?”

“It might have fallen out of a car.”

“Not at that point. The road doesn’t hit
the creek north of the railroad trestle. Empty
lots — nothing else.” Paradine lit a cigarette.
“Drink, honey?”

“I’ll fix it.” Jane went to work, her eyes
troubled. She brought Paradine a glass and
stood behind him, ruffling his hair with her fin-
gers. “Is anything wrong?”

“Of course not. Only — where did these toys
come from?”

“Johnson’s didn’t know, and they get their
stock from New York.”

“I’ve been checking up, too,” Paradine ad-
mitted. “That doll” — he poked it — “rather
worried me. Custom jobs, maybe, but I wish
I knew who’d made ’em.”

“A psychologist? That abacus — don’t they
give people tests with such things?”

Paradine snapped his fingers. “Right!
And say! There’s a guy going to speak at the
university next week, fellow named Holloway,
who’s a child psychologist. He’s a big shot,
with quite a reputation. He might know
something about it.”

“Holloway? I don’t — ”

“Rex Holloway. He’s . . . hm-m-m! He
doesn’t live far from here. Do you suppose he
might have had these things made himself?”
Jane was examining the abacus. She grim-

81

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

aced and drew back. “If he did, I don’t like
him. But see if you can find out, Denny.”
Paradine nodded. “I shall.”

He drank his highball, frowning. He was
vaguely worried. But he wasn’t scared — yet.

Rex Holloway was a fat, shiny man, with a
bald head and thick spectacles, above which
his thick, black brows lay like bushy cater-
pillars. Paradine brought him home to din-
ner one night a week later. Holloway did not
appear to watch the children, but nothing they
did or said was lost on him. His gray eyes,
shrewd and bright, missed little.

The toys fascinated him. In the living room
the three adults gathered around the table,
where the playthings had been placed. Hol-
loway studied them carefully as he listened
to what Jane and Paradine had to say. At
last he broke his silence.

“I’m glad I came here tonight. But not
completely. This is very disturbing, you
know.”

“Eh?” Paradine stared, and Jane’s face
showed her consternation. Holloway’s next
words did not calm them.

“We are dealing with madness.”

He smiled at the shocked looks they gave
him. “All children are mad, from an adult
viewpoint. Ever read Hughes’ ‘High Wind in
Jamaica’?”

“I’ve got it.” Paradine secured the little
book from its shelf. Holloway extended a
hand, took it, and flipped the pages till he
had found the place he wanted. He read
aloud:

“ ‘Babies of course are not human — they are
animals, and have a very ancient and rami-
fied culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even
snakes; the same in kind as these, but much
more complicated and vivid, since babies are,
after all, one of the most developed species
of the lower vertebrates. In short, babies have
minds which work in terms and categories of
their own which cannot be translated into the
terms and categories of the human mind.’ ”
Jane tried to take that calmly, but couldn’t.
“You don’t mean that Emma — ”

“Could you think like your daughter?” Hol-
loway asked. ‘Tisten: ‘One can no more think
like a baby than one can think like a bee.’ ”
Paradine mixed drinks. Over his shoulder
he said, “You’re theorizing quite a bit, aren’t
you? As I get it, you’re implying that babies
have a culture of their own, even a high stand-
ard of intelligence.”

“Not necessarily. There’s no yardstick, you
see. All I say is that babies think in other
ways than we do. Not necessarily better —
that’s a question of relative values. But with
a different manner of extension — ” He sought
for words, grimacing.

“Fantasy,” Paradine said, rather rudely, but
.annoyed because of Emma. “Babies don’t
have different senses from ours.”

“Who said they did?” Holloway demanded.
“They use their minds in a different way, that’s
all. But it’s quite enough!”

“I’m trying to understand,” Jane said
slowly. “All I can think of is my Mixmaster.
It can whip up batter and potatoes, but it can
squeeze oranges, too.”

“Something like that. The brain’s a colloid,
a very complicated machine. We don’t know
much about its potentialities. We don’t even
know how much it can grasp. But it is known
that the mind becomes conditioned as the hu-
man animal matures. It follows certain fa-
miliar theorems, and all thought thereafter
is pretty well based on patterns taken for
granted. Look at this.” Holloway touched
the abacus. “Have you experimented with
it?”

“A little,” Paradine said.

“But not much. Eh?”

“Well—”

“Why not?”

“It’s pointless,” Paradine complained.
“Even a puzzle has to have some logic. But
those crazy angles — ”

“Your mind has been conditioned to Eu-
clid,” Holloway said. “So this — thing — bores
us, and seems pointless. But a child knows
nothing of Euclid. A different sort of
gegmetry from ours wouldn’t impress him as
being i’logical. He believes what he sees.”

“Are you trying to tell me that this gadget’s
got a fourth-dimensional extension?” Paradine
demanded.

“Not visually, anyway,” Holloway denied.
“All I say is that our minds, conditioned to
Euclid, can see nothing in this but an illogical
tangle of wires. But a child — especially a baby
— might see more. Not at first. It’d be a puz-
zle, of course. Only a child wouldn’t be handi-
capped by too many preconceived ideas.”
“Hardening of the thought-arteries,” Jane
interjected.

Paradine was not convinced. “Then a baby
could work calculus better than Einstein? No,

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

62

I don’t mean that. I can see your point, more
or less clearly. Only — ”

“Well, look. Let’s suppose there are two
kinds of geometry — we’ll limit it, for the sake
of the example. Our kind. Euclidean, and
another, which we’ll call x. X hasn’t much
relationship to Euclid. It’s based on different
theorems. Two and two needn’t equal four
in it; they could equal »/, or they might not
even equal. A baby’s mind is not yet condi-
tioned, except by certain questionable factors
of heredity and environment. Start the in-
fant on Euclid — ”

“Poor kid,” Jane said.

Holloway shot her a quick glance. “The
basis of Euclid. Alphabet blocks. Math, ge-
ometry, algebra — they come much later. We’re
familiar with that development. On the other
hand, start the baby with the basic principles
of our x logic.”

“Blocks? What kind?”

Holloway looked at the abacus. “It wouldn’t
make much sense to us. But we’ve been con-
ditioned to Euclid.”

Paradine poured himself a stiff shot of whis-
key. “That’s pretty awful. You’re not limit-
ing to math.”

“Right! I’m not limiting it at all. How
can I? I’m not conditioned to x logic.”
“There’s the answer,” Jane said, with a sigh
of relief. “Who is? It’d take such a person
to make the sort of toys you apparently think
these are.”

Holloway nodded, his eyes, behind the thick
lenses, blinking. “Such people may exist ”
“Where?”

“They might prefer to keep hidden.”
“Supermen?”

“I wish I knew. You see, Paradine, we’ve
got yardstick trouble again. By our stand-
ards these people might seem super-doopers
in certain respects. In others they might seem
moronic. It’s not a quantitative difference;
it’s qualitative. They think different. And
I’m sure we can do things they can’t.”
“Maybe they wouldn’t want to,” Jane said.

Paradine tapped the fused gadgetry on the
box. “What about this? It implies — ”

“A purpose, sure.”

“Transportation ?”

“One thinks of that first. If so, the box
might have come from anywhere.”

“Where— things ar e— different?” Paradine
asked slowly.

“Exactly. In space, or even time. I don’t

know; I’m a psychologist. Unfortunately
I’m conditioned to Euclid, too.”

“Funny place it must be,” Jane said.
“Denny, get rid of those toys.”

“I intend to.”

Holloway picked up the crystal cube. “Did
you question the children much?”

Paradine said, “Yeah. Scott said there were
people in that cube when he first looked. I
asked him what was in it now.”

“What did he say?” The psychologist’s eyes
widened.

“He said they were building a place. His
exact words. I asked him who — people? But
he couldn’t explain.”

“No, I suppose not,” Holloway muttered.
“It must be progressive. How long have the
children had these toys?”

“About three months, I guess.”

“Time enough. The perfect toy, you see,
is both instructive and mechanical. It should
do things, to interest a child, and it should
leach, preferably unobtrusively. Simple prob-
lems at first. Later — ”

“X logic,” Jane said, white-faced.

Paradine cursed under his breath. “Emma
and Scott are perfectly normal!”

“Do you know how their minds work —
now?”

Holloway didn’t pursue the thought. He
fingered the doll. “It would be interesting to
know the conditions of the place where these
things came from. Induction doesn’t help a
great deal, though. Too many factors are
missing. We can’t visualize a world based on
the x factor — environment adjusted to minds
thinking in x patterns. This luminous net-
work inside the doll. It could be anything.
It could exist inside us, though we haven’t
discovered it yet. When we find the right
stain — ” He shrugged. “What do you make
of this?”

It was a crimson globe, two inches in diame-
ter, with a protruding knob upon its surface.
“What could anyone make of it?”

“Scott? Emma?”

“I hadn’t even seen it till about three weeks
ag6. Then Emma started to play with it.”
Paradine nibbled his lip. “After that, Scott
got interested.”

“Just what do they do?”

“Hold it up in front of them and move it
back and forth. No particular pattern of mo-
tion.”

“No Euclidean pattern,” Holloway cor-
rected. “At first they couldn’t understand the

63

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

toy’s purpose. They had to be educated up
to it.”

“That’s horrible,” Jane said.

“Not to them. Emma is probably quicker
at understanding x than is Scott, for her mind
isn’t yet conditioned to this environment.”
Paradine said, “But I can remember plenty
of things I did as a child. Even as a baby.”
“Well?”

“Was I— mad— then?”

“The things you don’t remember are the
criterion of your madness,” Holloway retorted.
“But I use the word ‘madness’ purely as a con-
venient symbol for the variation from the
known human norm. The arbitrary standard
of sanity.”

Jane put down her glass. “You’ve said that
induction was difficult, Mr. Holloway. But
it seems to me you’re making a great deal of
it from very little. After all, these toys — ”

“I am a psychologist, and I’ve specialized
in children. I’m not a layman. These toys
mean a great deal to me, chiefly because they
mean so little.”

“You might be wrong.”

“Well, I rather hope I am. I’d like to ex-
amine the children.”

Jane rose in arms. “How?”

After Holloway had explained, she nodded,
though still a bit hesitantly. “W’ell, that’s all
right. But they’re not guinea pigs.”

The psychologist patted the air with a plump
hand. “My dear girl! I’m not a Franken-
stein. To me the individual is the prime fac-
tor — naturally, since I work with minds. If
there’s anything wrong with the youngsters,
I want to cure them.”

Paradine put down his cigarette and slowly
watched blue smoke spiral up, wavering in an
unfelt draft. “Can you give a prognosis?”
“I’ll try. That’s all I can say. If the un-
developed minds have been turned into the
x channel, it’s necessary to divert them back.
I’m not saying that’s the wisest thing to do,
but it probably is from our standards. After
all, Emma and Scott wdll have to live in this
world.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I can’t believe there’s much
wrong. They seem about average, thoroughly
normal.”

“Superficially they may seem so. They’ve
no reason for acting abnormally, have they?
And how can you tell if they — think differ-
ently?”

‘Til call ’’em,” Paradine said.

“Make it informal, then. I don’t want them
to be on guard.”

Jane nodded toward the toys. Holloway
said, “Leave the stuff there, eh?”

But the psychologist, after Emma and Scott
were summoned, made no immediate move at
direct questioning. He managed to draw Scott
unobtrusively into the conversation, dropping
key words now and then. Nothing so obvious
as a word-association test — co-operation is nec-
essary for that.

The most interesting development occurred
when Holloway took up the abacus. “Mind
showing me how this works?”

Scott hesitated. “Yes, sir. Like this — ”
He slid a bead deftly through the maze, in a
tangled course, so swiftly that no one was quite
sure whether or not it ultimately vanished. It
might have been merely legerdemain. Then,
again —

Holloway tried. Scott watched, wrinkling
his nose.

“That right?”

“Uh-huh. It’s gotta go there — ”

“Here? Why?”

“Well, that’s the only way to make it work.”
But Holloway was conditioned to Euclid.
There was no apparent reason why the bead
should slide from this particular wire to the
other. It looked like a random factor. Also,
Holloway suddenly noticed, this wasn’t the
path the bead had taken previously, when
Scott had worked the puzzle. At least, as well
as he could tell.

“Will you show me again?”

Scott did, and twice more, on request. Hol-
loway blinked through his glasses. Random,
yes. And a variable. Scott moved the bead
along a different course each time.

Somehow, none of the adults could tell
whether or not the bead vanished. If they
had expected to see it disappear, their reac-
tions might have been different.

In the end nothing was solved. Holloway,
as he said good night, seemed ill at ease.

“May I come again?”

“I wish you would,” Jane told him. “Any
time. You still think — ”

He nodded. “The children’s minds are not
reacting normally. They’re not dull at all,
but I’ve the most extraordinary impression
that they arrive at conclusions in a way we
don’t understand. As though they used alge-
bra while we used geometry. The same con-
clusion, but a different method of reaching
it.”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

64

“What about the toys?” Paradine asked sud-
denly.

“Keep them out of the way. I’d like to bor-
row them, if I may — ”

That night Paradine slept badly. Hollo-
way’s parallel had been ill-chosen. It led
to disturbing theories. The x factor — The
children were using the equivalent of algebraic
reasoning, while adults used geometry.

Fair enough. Only —

Algebra can give you answers that geometry
cannot, since there are certain terms and sym-
bols which cannot be expressed geometrically.
Suppose x logic showed conclusions inconceiv-
able to an adult mind?

"Damn!” Paradine whispered. Jane stirred
beside him.

“Dear? Can’t you sleep either?”

“No.” He got up and went into the next
room. Emma slept peacefully as a cherub,
her fat arm curled around Mr. Bear. Through
the open doorway Paradine could see Scott’s
dark head motionless on the pillow. i

Jane was beside him. He slipped his arm
around her.

“Poor little people,” she murmured. “And
Holloway called them mad. I think we’re the
ones who are crazy, Dennis.”

“Uh-huh. We’ve got jitters.”

Scott stirred in his sleep. Without awak-
ening, he called what was obviously a ques-
tion, though it did not seem to be in any par-
ticular language. Emma gave a little mewling
cry that changed pitch sharply.

She had not wakened. The children lay
without stirring.

But, Paradine thought, with a sudden sick-
ness in his middle, it was exactly as though
Scott had asked Emma something, and she
had replied.

Had their minds changed so that even —
sleep — was different to them?

He thrust the thought away. “You’ll catch
cold. Let’s get back to bed. Want a drink?”
“I think I do,” Jane said, watching Emma.
Her hand reached out blindly toward the
child; she drew it back. “Come on. We’ll
wake the kids.”

They drank a little brandy together, but
said nothing. Jane cried in her sleep, later.

Scott was not awake, but his mind worked
in slow, careful building. Thus —

“They’ll take the toys away. The fat man
, . . listava dangerous maybe. But the Ghoric

direction won’t show . . . evankrus dun hasn’t-
them. Intransdection . . . bright and shiny.
Emma. She’s more khopranik-high now than
... I still don’t see how to . . . thavarar lixery
dist — ”

A little of Scott’s thoughts could still be
understood. But Emma had become condi-
tioned to x much faster.

She was thinking, too.

Not like an adult or a child. Not even
like a human. Except, perhaps, a human of
a type shockingly unfamiliar to genus komo.

Sometimes Scott himself had difficulty in
following her thoughts.

If it had not been for Holloway, life might
have settled back into an almost normal rou-
tine. The toys were no longer active remind-
ers. Emma still enjoyed her dolls and sand
pile, with a thoroughly explicable delight.
Scott was satisfied with baseball and his chemi-
cal set. They did everything other children
did, and evinced few, if any, flashes of ab-
normality. But Holloway seemed to be an
alarmist.

He was having the toys tested, with rather
idiotic results. He drew endless charts and
diagrams, corresponded with mathematicians,
engineers, and other psychologists, and went
quietly crazy trying to find rhyme or reason
in the construction of the gadgets. The box
itself, with its cryptic machinery, told noth-
ing. Fusing 1 had melted too much of the stuff
into slag. But the toys —

It was the random element that baffled in-
vestigation. Even that was a matter of se-
mantics. For Holloway was convinced that
it wasn’t really random. There just weren’t
enough known factors. No adult could work
the abacus, for example. And Holloway
thoughtfully refrained from letting a child
play with the thing.

The crystal cube was similarly cryptic. It
showed a mad pattern of colors, which some-
times moved. In this it resembled a kaleido-
scope. But the shifting of balance and gravity
didn’t affect it. Again the random factor.

Or, rather, the unknown. The x pattern.
Eventually Paradine and Jane slipped back
into something like complacence, with a feeling
that the children had been cured of their men-
tal quirk, now that the contributing cause had
been removed. Certain of the actions of Emma
and Scott gave them every reason to quit
worrying.

For the kids enjoyed swimming, hiking,
movies, games, the normal functional toys of

65

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

this particular time-sector. It was true that
they failed to master certain rather puzzling
mechanical devices which involved some cal-
culation. A three-dimensional jigsaw globe
Paradine had picked up, for example. But
he found that difficult himself.

Once in a while there were lapses. Scott
was hiking with his father one Saturday after-
noon, and the two had paused at the summit
of a hill. Beneath them a rather lovely valley
was spread.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Paradine remarked.

Scott examined the scene gravely. “It’s
all wrong,” he said.

“Eh?”

“I dunno.”

“What’s wrong about it?”

“Gee — ” Scott lapsed into puzzled silence.
“I dunno.”

The children had missed their toys, but not
for long. Emma recovered first, though Scott
still moped. He held unintelligible conversa-
tions with his sister, and studied meaningless
scrawls she drew on paper he supplied. It
was almost as though he was consulting her,
anent difficult problems beyond his grasp.

If Emma understood more, Scott had more
real intelligence, and manipulatory skill as
well. He built a gadget with his Meccano set,
but was dissatisfied. The apparent cause of
his satisfaction was exactly why Paradine was
relieved when he viewed the structure. It
was the sort of thing a normal boy would
make, vaguely reminiscent of a cubistic ship.

It was a bit too normal to please Scott. He
asked Emma more questions, though in pri-
vate. She thought for a time, and then made
more scrawls with an awkwardly clutched pen-
cil.

“Can you read that stuff?” Jane asked her
son one morning.

“Not read it, exactly. I can tell what 3he
means. Not all the time, but mostly.”

“Is it writing?”

“N-no. It doesn’t mean what it looks like.”

“Symbolism,” Paradine suggested over his
coffee.

Jane looked at him, her eyes widening.
“Denny—”

He winked and shook his head. Later, when
they were alone, he said, “Don’t let Holloway
upset you. I’m not implying that the kids
are corresponding in an unknown tongue. If
Emma draws a squiggle and says it’s a flower,
that’s an arbitrary rule — Scott remembers that.

Next time she draws the same sort of squiggle,
or tries to — well!”

“Sure,” Jane said doubtfu’ly. “Have you
noticed Scott’s been doing a lot of reading
lately?”

“I noticed. Nothing unusual, though. No
Kant or Spinoza.”

“He browses, that’s all.”

“Well, so did I, at his age,” Paradine said,
and went off to his morning classes. He
lunched with Holloway, which was becoming a
daily habit, and spoke of Emma’s literary
endeavors.

“Was I right about symbolism, Rex?”

The psychologist nodded. “Quite right.
Our own language is nothing but arbitrary
symbolism now. At least in its application.
Look here.” On his napkin he drew a very
narrow ellipse. “What’s that?”

“You mean what does it represent?”

“Yes. What does it suggest to you? It
could be a crude representation of — what?”
“Plenty of things,” Paradine said. “Rim of
a glass. A fried egg. A loaf of French bread.
A cigar.”

Holloway added a little triangle to his draw-
ing, apex joined to one end of the ellipse. He
looked up at Paradine.

“A fish,” the latter said instantly.

“Our familiar symbol for a fish. Even with-
out fins, eyes or mouth, it’s recognizable, be-
cause we’ve been conditioned to identify this
particular shape with our mental picture of a
fish. The basis of a rebus. A symbol, to us,
means a lot more than what we actually see
on paper. What’s in your mind when you look
at this sketch?”

“Why — a fish.”

“Keep going. What do you visualize —
everything!”

“Scales,” Paradine said slowly, looking into
space. “Water. Foam. A fish’s eye. The
fins. The colors.”

“So the symbol represents a lot more than
just the abstract idea fish. Note the connota-
tion’s that of a noun, not a verb. It’s harder to
express actions by symbolism, you know. Any-
way — reverse the process. Suppose you want
to make a symbol for some concrete noun, say
bird. Draw it.”

Paradine drew two connected arcs, concavi-
ties down.

“The lowest common denominator,” Hollo-
way nodded. “The natural tendency is to sim-
plify. Especially when a child is seeing some-
thing for the first time and has few standards

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

66

of comparison. He tries to identify the new
thing with what’s already familiar to him.
Ever notice how a child draws the ocean?”
He didn’t wait for an answer; he went on.

“A series of jagged points. Like the oscil-
lating line on a seismograph. When I first
saw the Pacific, I was about three. I remem-
ber it pretty clearly. It looked — tilted. A
flat plain, slanted at an angle. The waves were
regular triangles, apex upward. Now I didn’t
see them stylized that way, but later, remem-
bering, I had to find some familiar standard
of comparison. Which is the only way of
getting any conception of an entirely new
thing. The average child tries to draw these
regular triangles, but his co-ordination’s poor.
He gets a seismograph pattern.”

“All of which means what?”

“A child sees the ocean. He stylizes it. He
draws a certain definite pattern, symbolic, to
him, of the sea. Emma’s scrawls may be sym-
bols, too. I don’t mean that the world looks
different to her — brighter, perhaps, and
sharper, more vivid and with a slackening of
perception above her eye level. What I do.
mean is that her thought-processes are differ-
ent, that she translates what she sees into
abnormal symbols.”

“You still believe—”

“Yes, I do. Her mind has been conditioned
unusually. It may be that she breaks down
what she sees into simple, obvious patterns —
and realizes a significance to those patterns
that we can’t understand. Like the abacus.
She saw a pattern in that, though to us it was
completely random.”

Paradine abruptly decided to taper off these
luncheon engagements with Holloway. The
man was an alarmist. His theories were grow-
ing more fantastic than ever, and he dragged
in anything, applicable or not, that would
support them.

Rather sardonically he said, “Do you mean
Emma’s communicating with Scott in an un-
known language?”

“In symbols for which she hasn’t any words.
I’m sure Scott understands a great deal of
those — scrawls. To him, an isosceles triangle
may represent any factor, though probably a
concrete noun. Would a man who knew noth-
ing of algebra understand what HaO meant?
Would he realize that the symbol could evoke
a picture of the ocean?”

Paradine didn’t answer. Instead, he men-
tioned to Holloway Scott’s curious remark that

the landscape, from the hill, had looked all
wrong. A moment later, he was inclined to
regret his impulse, for the psychologist was
off again.

“Scott’s thought-patterns are building up to
a sum that doesn’t equal this world. Perhaps
he’s subconsciously expecting to see the world
where those toys came from.”

Paradine stopped listening. Enough was
enough. The kids were getting along all right,
and the only remaining disturbing factor was
Holloway himself. That night, however, Scott
evinced an interest, later significant, in eels.

There was nothing apparently harmful in
natural history. Paradine explained about
eels.

“But where do they lay their eggs? Or do
they?”

“That’s still a mystery. Their spawning
grounds are unknown. Maybe the Sargasso
Sea, or the deeps, where the pressure can help
them force the young out of their bodies.”
“Funny,” Scott said, thinking deeply.
“Salmon do the same thing, more or less.
They go up rivers to spawn.” Paradine went
into detail. Scott was fascinated.

“But that’s right, dad. They’re born in the
river, and when they learn how to swim, they
go down to the sea. And they come back to
lay their eggs, huh?”

“Right.”

“Only they wouldn’t come back,” Scott pon-
dered. “They’d just send their eggs — ”

“It’d take a very long ovipositor,” Paradine
said, and vouchsafed some well-chosen remarks
upon oviparity.

His son wasn’t entirely satisfied. Flowers,
he contended, sent their seeds long distances.

“They don’t guide them. Not many find
fertile soil.”

“Flowers haven’t got brains, though. Dad,
why do people live here?”

“Glendale?”

“No — here. This whole place. It isn’t all
there is, I bet.”

“Do you mean the other planets?”

Scott was hesitant. “This is only — part —
of the big place. It’s like the river where the
salmon go. Why don’t people go on down to
the ocean when they grow up?”

Paradine realized that Scott was speaking
figuratively. He felt a brief chill. The —
ocean?

The young of the species are not conditioned
to live in the completer world of their parents.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

AST— 5R

67

Having developed sufficiently, they enter that
world. Later they breed. The fertilized eggs
are buried in the sand, far up the river, where
later they hatch.

And they learn. Instinct alone is fatally
slow. Especially in the ease of a specialized
genus, unable to cope even with this world,
unable to feed or drink or survive, unless some-
one has foresightedly provided for those needs.

The young, fed and tended, would survive.
There would be incubators and robots. They
would survive, but they would not know how
to swim downstream, to the vaster world of
the ocean.

So they must be taught. They must be
trained and conditioned in many ways.

Painlessly, subtly, unobtrusively. Children
love toys that do things — and if those toys
teach at the same time —

In the latter half of the nineteenth century
an Englishman sat on a grassy bank near a
stream. A very small girl lay near him, staring
up at the sky. She had discarded a curious
toy with which she had been playing, and now
was murmuring a wordless little song, to which
the man listened with half an ear.

“What was that, my dear?” he asked at last.
“Just something I made up, Uncle Charles ”
"Sing it again.” He pulled out a notebook.
The girl obeyed.

“Does it mean anything?”

She nodded. “Oh, yes. Like the stories I
tell you, you know.”

“They’re wonderful stories, dear.”

“And you’ll put them in a book some day?”
“Yes, but I must change them quite a lot, or
no one would understand. But I don’t think
I’ll change your little song.”

“You mustn’t. If you did, it wouldn’t mean
anything.”

“I won’t change that stanza, anyway,” he
promised. “Just what does it mean?”

“It’s the way out, I think,” the girl said
doubtfully. “I’m not sure yet. My magic toys
told me.”

“I wish I knew what London shop sold those
marvelous toys!”

“Mamma bought them for me. She’s dead.
Papa doesn’t care.”

She lied. She had found the toys in a box
one day, as she played by the Thames. And
they were indeed wonderful.

Her little song — Uncle Charles thought it
didn’t mean anything. (He wasn’t her real
uncle, she parenthesized. But he was nice.)

The song meant a great deal. It was the way.
Presently she would do what it said, and
then —

But she was already too old. She never
found the way.

Paradine had dropped Holloway. Jane had
taken a dislike to him, naturally enough,
since what she wanted most of all was to have
her fears calmed. Since Scott and Emma acted
normally now, Jane felt satisfied. It was partly
wishful-thinking, to which Paradine could not
entirely subscribe.

Scott kept bringing gadgets to Emma for
her approval. Usually she’d shake her head.
Sometimes she would look doubtful. Very
occasionally she would signify agreement.
Then there would be an hour of laborious,
crazy scribbling on scraps of note paper, and
Scott, after studying the notations, would ar-
range and rearrange his rocks, bits of ma-
chinery, candle ends, and assorted junk. Each
day the maid cleaned them away, and each day
Scott began again.

He condescended to explain a little to his
puzzled father, who could see no rhyme or
reason in the game.

“But why this pebble right here?”

“It’s hard and round, dad. It belongs
there.”

“So is this one hard and round.”

“Well, that’s got vaseline on it. When you
get that far, you can’t see just a hard round
thing.”

“What comes next? This candle?”

Scott looked disgusted. “That’s toward the
end. The iron ring’s next.”

It was, Paradhfe thought, like a Scout trail
through the woods, markers in a labyrinth.
But here again was the random factor. Logie
halted — familiar logic — at Scott’s motives in
arranging the junk as he did.

Paradine went out. Over his shoulder he
saw Scott pull a crumpled piece of- paper and
a pencil from his pocket, and head for Emma,
who was squatted in a comer thinking things
over.

Well-

Jane was lunching with Uncle Harry, and, on
this hot Sunday afternoon, there was little to
do but read the papers. Paradine settled him-
self in the coolest place he could find, with a
Collins, and lost himself in the comic strips.

An hour later a clatter of feet upstairs roused
him from his doze. Scott’s voice was crying
exultantly, “This is it. Slug! Come on — ”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

68

Paradine stood up quickly, frowning. As
he went into the hall the telephone began to
ring. Jane had promised to call —

His hand was on the receiver when Emma’s
faint voice squealed with excitement. Para-
dine grimaced. What the devil was going on
upstairs?

Scott shrieked, “Look out! This way!”

Paradine, his mouth working, his nerves
ridiculously tense, forgot the phone and raced
up the stairs. The door of Scott’s room was
open.

The children were vanishing.

They went in fragments, like thick smoke
in a wind, or like movement in a distorting
mirror. Hand in hand they went, in a direc-
tion Paradine could not understand, and as
he blinked there on the threshold, they were
gone.

“Emma!” he said, dry-throated. “Scotty!”

On the carpet lay a pattern of markers, peb-
bles, an iron ring — junk. A random pattern.
A crumpled sheet of paper blew toward Para-
dine.

He picked it up automatically.

“Kids. Where are you? Don’t hide —

“Emma! SCOTTY!”

Downstairs the telephone stopped its shrill,
monotonous ringing. Paradine looked at the
paper he held.

It was a leaf torn from a book. There were
interlineations and marginal notes, in Emma’s
meaningless scrawl. A stanza of verse had
been so underlined and scribbled over that it
was almost illegible, but Paradine was thor-
oughly familiar with “Through the Looking
Glass.” His memory gave him the words —

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimbel in the wabe.

All minisv were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

THE

Idiotically he thought: Humpty Dumpty

explained it. A wabe is the plot of grass
around a sundial. A sundial. Time— It has
something to do with time. A long time ago
Scotty asked me what a wabe was. Symbolism.

’Twas brillig—

A perfect mathematical formula, giving all
the conditions, in symbolism the children had
finally understood. The junk on the floor.
The toves had to be made slithy — vaseline? —
and they had to be placed in a certain rela-
tionship, so that they’d gyre and gimbel.

Lunacy !

But it had not been lunacy to Emma and
Scott. They thought differently. They used
x logic. Those notes Emma had made on the
page — she’d translated Carroll’s words into
symbols both she and Scott could understand.

The random factor had made sense to the
children. They had fulfilled the conditions of
the time-span equation. And the name raths
outgrabe —

Paradine made a rather ghastly little sound,
deep in his throat. He looked at the crazy
pattern on the carpet. If he could follow it, as
the kids had done — But he couldn’t. The
pattern was senseless. The random factor de-
feated him. He was conditioned to Euclid.

Even if he went insane, he still couldn’t do
it. It would be the wrong kind of lunacy.

His mind had stopped working now. But
in a moment the stasis of incredulous horror
would pass — Paradine crumpled the page in
his fingers. “Emma, Scotty,” he called in a
dead voice, as though he could expect no re-
sponse.

Sunlight slanted through the open windows,
brightening the golden pelt of Mr. Bear.
Downstairs the ringing of the telephone began
again.

END.

69

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

THE MAN IN
THE MOON

By Henry Norton

THE queer little fellow had strange ideas. A harmless little
man, who wanted light, and a workbench — that, grew. He didn’t
quite seem to fit our busy civilization. Didn’t fit Earth at all — -

Illustrated by Kolllker

The time to put a stop to things is at the
beginning. It’s a lot easier, for instance, to
pull up a sapling than to chop down a tree.
It would have been easier to spank a certain
paper hanger back in 1935, than it was to
crush his great war machine in January of
1944.

As Dr. Raven looked back on the whole
affair, he realized he should have said “No!”
and stuck to it the day Sereda asked for a
workbench. But hindsight is notably more
accurate than foresight, and the heavens know
the little man looked harmless. How well
they know!

Raven remembered the first time the little
Sereda ever came to Mount Palomar. He had
walked all the way up the mountain, and sat
down dusty and out of breath on the steps
of the observatory. Raven felt sorry for him.

He couldn’t have been more than five feet
tall, and his pleasant, swarthy face was marked
on the chin by a black, hairy mole. He was
completely bald. Not just bald on top — there
was no relieving fringe around his ears or

neck. He was literally bald as an egg, and his
face was round and smiling.

“The sun is good,” he said simply to Raven.

“Good and hot,” said Raven. A lean, black
whip of a man, he towered over the little
stranger. "Better come inside.”

Sereda got up obediently and trotted into
the great vault of the observatory. He stopped
just inside the door and shook his head at
the gloom. Par above in the shadows, the
shining barrel of the giant telescope pointed
into the sky like some fantastic weapon of the,
future. Its two-hundred-inch reflector had ex-
tended man’s intimacy with space to include
island universes hereto undreamed of. It had
brought the faces of the solar family into easy
view. Incidentally, although communication
had not yet been established, it had given the
people of Earth a grave respect for the ac-
complishments now so plainly visible on Mars.

The little man backed out of the observatory
and stood in the sunlight. He spoke with the
flat simplicity of a child who has learned some-
thing by heart.

“Light is good,” he said. “Darkness is evil.”

ASTOUNDING SCIEN*CE-FICTION

70

“You’ll get sunstroke,” said Dr. Raven.

But sunstroke was not for Sereda. He sat
in the sun all that afternoon, soaking up
warmth, smiling his sleepy smile. Only when
the sun was gone, and the stars began to show
in the lemon-green twilight sky did he yield
to the attraction of the lights within the ob-
servatory and move inside.

It was mere chance Raven had been there
that afternoon. Properly, an astronomer’s day
begins at nightfall. Not because of the dark-
ness, of course. That factor, important to the
naked eye in star gazing, means little to the

two-hundred-inch telescope. But at night
there’s less distortion in the atmosphere, less
dust and smoke. Often, fewer clouds. All in
all, better conditions.

Those conditions suited Sereda fine. His
days were spent in the more or less consistent
California sunshine. Nights he spent within
the observatory, while Raven and his gifted
young assistant, Bob Ferris, went through the
endless routine of observation, charting, pho-
tography and calculation that modern as-
tronomy has become. He had been there al-
most a month before he got around to asking
Dr. Raven for a workbench. Rather, he

71

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

amended quickly, room for a workbench.

“What kind of bench?” Raven asked. “What
work?”

“Just for some simple experiments,” Sereda
coaxed. “They will make no trouble. And I
will make my own tools and ’equipment.”

Raven was again reminded unaccountably
of the grave consideration of children, in which
all things are either so or not so, with no stops
en route.

"I humored the little guy,” he explained to
Ferris next evening. “He was so dam serious
about it. And it shouldn’t do any particular
harm. I wonder when and where and what
he eats.”

“I dunno, but he sure got his bench up in a

hurry.”

“Is it in already?” Raven asked.

“Such as it is,” grinned Ferris.

They went over and examined it together,
while Sereda stood respectfully to one side.
The bench was constructed from some plastic
metal, rough and pitted, but solid-looking. As
Ferris said afterward, it looked like the metal
had been chewed into shape. Raven rubbed
his hand reflectively over the surface and with-
drew it at once.

“Not a very level working plane, Sereda,”
he said.

“It will smooth itself,” Sereda ventured.

“What is it?” asked Ferris, touching the
bench gingerly. It had a curious feel, a faint
resilience. Ferris had a momentary impression
that the bench was feeling him, appraising him,
as he touched it. Sereda mumbled something
incomprehensible in answer to the question,
and Raven announced it was time to get to
work as though he were glad to dismiss the
bench from his mind.

Trouble was, it wouldn’t stay dismissed.
The subject came up again next evening when
Raven came in about nine. Ferris was up on
the platform, and Sereda was in his corner on
the main floor of the building.

“He must have polished on that bench all
day,” said Ferris in amusement. “We should
turn him loose on some of the brass work. See
how shiny he got it?”

“I saw it,” Raven answered shortly.

Bob Ferris looked at him in surprise. It
was one of the few times he had ever heard
Raven speak abruptly. He followed the direc-
tion of the older man’s gaze. The astronomer
was looking at Sereda’s workbench. It looked
small from that elevation, and every plane of

it showed a reflection, as if light were striking
it from every direction.

“Did you ever try to polish a piece of steel,
Bob?” asked Raven suddenly.

“No,” Ferris said, “I never did. Why?”

“It’s a job,” said Raven. “If Sereda had
used the fastest cutting wheels known — even
phosphor bronze dipped in oil and diamond
dust — and worked all night with the skill and
precision of a machine, he might have finished
that surface. Shaping the legs and braces —
well, that’s impossible!”

“That may not be as hard as steel,” argued
Ferris.

Raven grinned sheepishly. “That’s it, of
course,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of that.
I was getting my wind up over nothing. Just
the same — ”

“Look here, sir,” Ferris suggested, “if this
little guy annoys you. I’ll chuck him out. I’ll
get rid of him. Just say the word.”

“I wish I dared,” said Raven.

Dr. Raven would have been hard put to
find words for his uneasiness. There wasn’t
anything so menacing about Sereda. In fact
the little man seemed to have a definite code
of conduct. But it was a code based on some
odd tangent. It was. Raven decided, like try-
ing to fit the behavior of a highly civilized
person into the society of Australian bush-
men. He ran headlong into it in one of his
conversations with Sereda. Raven felt the
workbench was getting a little out of hand.

“You asked for room for a workbench,” he
reminded Sereda. “I agreed. But this” —
he waved toward the twenty-five-foot seg-
ment of shining metal — “this is more than I
bargained for.”

“It’s the same bench,” said Sereda.

Raven smiled tolerantly. It was easily five
times as long as the original bench had been,
and along its whole length it gleamed dully.
Raven would have given plenty for an analysis
of the metal it was made from, yet he shrank
from touching it.

“What makes it shine like that?” he asked.

Sereda smiled. “Light is life. Light is
good,” he said. “Darkness is evil. Darkness
is death.”

“Nonsense,” Raven said not unkindly.
“You’re just afraid of the dark. It’s a com-
mon phobia, but you should try to overcome
it.”

Sereda’s wide mouth thinned, but it did not

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

72

lose its upturned smile, “Light is good,” he
repeated stubbornly.

“Another thing,” Raven went on. “Where
are you getting your materials? This table —
these tools?”

He supposed they were tools, though he had
never seen anything like them. They were
many-shaped. Curving, slender fingers of
shining metal. Odd coils, luminous and fra-
gile. Stubby rods and queer, transparent
chunks. The shapes were strange, yet vaguely
reminiscent.

“They are needed in my work,” Sereda an-
swered.

“See here,” Raven protested. “You seem
to have a knack for metalwork, and I’m de-
lighted to let you amuse yourself. But you
mustn’t interfere with the observatory in what
you call your work. What is your work, any-
way?”

“There must be more light. Now there is
half darkness. Darkness is evil, is death. To
destroy the darkness is to create life.”

Raven’s black eyes glinted in amusement.

“Fiat lux, and all that,” he commented.
“Well, if you’re going to abolish night time,
you’ve picked yourself a real job.”

Raven didn’t stop to wonder how the job
was shaping up, or how it was being done.
Not for several weeks. Then it was brought to
.his attention sharply. Ferris stopped by to
give Dr. Raven a lift on this particular eve-
ning, so they arrived at the observatory to-
gether, quite a bit earlier than usual. The
sun was still touching Mount Palomar, though
shadows were deepening in the valley below.
They sat in the car for a while, watching the
sunset.

“That little Sereda is wacky,” Ferris said
abruptly.

“What brought that on?” asked Raven.

Ferris pointed. Sereda was coming up the
footpath to the observatory. He was carry-
ing something heavy, and twice he stopped
to look back. He climbed so as to be always
on the edge of the sunlight as it lifted slowly
up the hillside.

“He’s lining the observatory,” Ferris said.

“Lining it?”

“Lining it with metal like his bench.” Fer-
ris sounded more worried than amused. “He’s
got one big section of the wall finished.”

“The hell you say,” commented Raven.

“W’hat I want to know, who is this Sereda?
W 7 here did he come from? What’s he trying

to do? He’s doing things that aren’t possible.
They aren’t even human!”

“Now don’t get upset, Bob,” said Raven.

“And another thing! People down in the
valley say things are being stolen, and they’ve
traced it to somebody on the mountain. All
kinds of metal. One man said fifty of his
chickens were killed, and their hearts cut out.”

Raven swore softly. His biochemistry was
rusty, but he remembered something about
the Lindbergh-Carrell experiments — living tis-
sue that grew in chemical solution. He re-
solved to read up on it when he got home.

Sereda came over the last turn of the path
and saw the car. He hesitated, then walked
slowly over to it. He was carrying a big coil
of wire that he rested on the ground beside
him. He put his hand on the car door, and
Raven noticed that his fingers seemed dusted
with some metallic powder. Briefly they
seemed to be only caricatures of human fin-
gers. “He’s taller, too,” Raven thought.

“The dark is coming,” Sereda said.

“It’ll be light tonight,” Raven answered,
and pointed to the full moon on the horizon.

“Not light enough,” answered Sereda.

He gazed at the silver moon face, and his
eyes narrowed to dreamy slits.

“There is a proper orb, one that doesn’t
spin madly to evade the light,” he remarked.
“It must be a peaceful, homelike place.”

“Like your home, Sereda?” asked Raven.

He held his breath, but Sereda shouldered
his coil of wire and went into the observatory
without answering. Ferris got out of the car
and followed. Raven rubbed his fingers along
the car door. Where Sereda’s hand had rested,
four almost imperceptible hollows could be
felt, as though the resting fingers had sunk
into the metal. His lips tightened, and he
went into the building with the hair on his
neck rising. '

It was too light inside the dome. Ferris
made a wry face, for there was a subdued
radiance about the whole lower level, a glow
that seemed to reflect from the smooth metal
walls. Sereda was not in sight.

“That tears it!” said Ferris angrily. “Look
at those walls! I’m going to throw that lit-
tle—”

He stopped, for overhead the whine of the
machines began, the machines that open the
dome and focus the big two-hundred-incher.
Somebody had started the mechanism of the

73

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

world’s largest telescope. Ferris was out-
raged.

With a roar of anger he went up the steps
to the platform. Raven started to follow, then
stopped as if struck, and walked unbeliev-
ingly to the workbench. Sereda had tossed the
coil of wire on it as he came in. But what
Raven saw was not the coil. It was a puddle
of metal, still marked with looping lines to
show it had been a coil of wire, but a puddle
of cold, flowing metal that was slowly being
absorbed into the surface of the table. He
saw something else. Yesterday he had
scratched a mark on the concrete floor, to de-
termine the limit to which the workbench ex-
tended. It was now past his mark, by several
feet.

Ferris’ voice floated down furiously from the
platform, followed by the chiming tones of
Sereda. “What manner of man or devil is
this?” thought Raven, and he went up the
steps like a shadow.

The two stood facing each other, their heads
swimming into view in the moonlight that
streamed through the opened dome. The
giant telescope had been leveled directly at
the satellite. Sereda’s eyes were almost closed,
and there was a beatific smile on his round
face. Ferris put out a hand as Raven came
up, and gripped the older man’s arm with a
convulsive clutch.

“He wants to be the telescope,” he said in
a tight, flat voice.

"That’s all right. Bob ' Dr. Raven answered
uncomprehendingly. “Let him see it. He
can’t damage anything by looking in the view-
plate while we’re here.”

“He doesn’t want to see it, he wants to be
it!” Ferris corrected, and Sereda’s disembodied
head nodded in vigorous confirmation.

Raven made a startled, desperate effort to
keep his voice even. “That’s a big step to
take, Sereda. Why do you want to be a tele-
scope, anyway?”

Sereda’s wide slit of a mouth opened ,and
he bayed gently. “Crazy as a bam owl,”
thought Raven, “and I’m not far behind him.”
The words that tumbled out were mad,
stream-of-consciousness fragments. “ — glory
of the lights that burn in the heavens, and are
never dim, and are always bright, and life is
in them, in the flow of light from the living
stars — ” Ferris looked as if he were going to
be sick. Raven’s black brows made a sharp
diagonal across his forehead as one lifted and
the other squinted down in a thoughtful scowl.

“Look, Seseda,” he said. “In the view-
plate.”

They bent over the telescope, and the full
Moon rode in solemn majesty, seeming at a
distance of about thirteen miles from Mount
Palomar. The face was at once transformed
into mountains and plains; cratered peaks that
seemed to reach almost into touch, and plains
that spread dizzily like seas across the moon-
scape.

“Wouldn’t you rather be the Moon?” His
voice was soft.

Sereda looked at him thoughtfully.

“You could make it shine,” Raven coaxed.
“You could make it live and shine with light,
and all the stars in all the sky would send their
light to you.”

Sereda bent over the viewplate again.

“No air to cut out the light,” said Raven.

Sereda turned, and his head floated out of
sight as he walked out of the moonlight and
down the stairs. His feet made the faintest
clanging noise on the metal steps. Raven
turned soberly to Ferris.

“This is invasion,” he said.

Throughout the night they could hear Se-
reda below. An occasional clash of metal
rang like a muffled bell. The radiance within
the vault of the observatory dimmed gradu-
ally, as he made trip after laden trip out the
door.

Twice Raven’s curiosity took him to the
lower level. Once it was to try a drop of re-
agent acid on a fragment of the luminous
metal. Nothing happened. The drop clung
for a moment, then the metal seemed to twitch,
and the drop rolled off and fell to the floor.
There was no trace or stain on the' metal.

The second trip was close to morning. There
was no sign of Sereda in the building. Raven
looked outside, and saw the little creature
had piled his metal and his tools into a rough
stack about twelve feet long. He had evi-
dently grown tired, for he was lying across the
pile, and in the wan moonlight he seemed half
melted into the metal scraps on which he lay.
The whole contour of the pile was rounded
and streamlined.

Toward morning, there was a whooshing
noise from outside, and when dawn came Se-
reda was gone. There was a shallow rounded
trench in front of the observatory, a bed about
twelve feet long that looked as though it had
been chewed from solid rock. That was the

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

74

only trace, the only evidence that Sereda had
ever been there.

Ferris and Raven both thought about the
queer being a good many times in the suc-
ceeding weeks, but they did not speak about
him until the press of circumstances forced
them to. When the newspapers began talk-
ing about the Moon’s strange brilliance, they
could ignore it no longer.

Ferris looked up from his calculation. “The
albedo is completely cockeyed,” he said. “It’s
reflecting about five times as much light as it
should.”

Raven’s knobby hands moved from the
wrists in a characteristic gesture of puzzle-
ment, like the working of a claw machine.
He looked at Ferris, and saw only the un-
troubled interest of a schoolboy who has just
found an unusual problem for his teacher. He
spoke in the indulgent tone a fond parent
might use to describe the actions of a naughty
child.

Raven looked again at the Moon. “It’s
like . . . like stainless steel,” he said, “or that,
stuff — ”

“Sereda’s metal,” Ferris agreed. He chuckled
reminiscently. “He was a funny little man.”
“He wasn’t funny,” said Raven. “The last
time we saw him he wasn’t little. And I’m
damn near convinced he wasn’t a man.”
Ferris looked startled.

“If he was human,” Raven continued, “he’s
done one of two things. He’s either brought
the science of symbiosis to perfection, or es-
tablished a metalline economy.”

“Wait a minute,” said Ferris. “Symbiosis
is the combining of two life forms, like the
union of spores and fungi to create lichen.”
“That’s what it is to us,” Raven said. “We
don’t know what it might be to some entity
outside Earthly experience. Sereda fits no
Earthly matrix.”

“What are you trying to do, tell me he was
the ‘man from Mars’?”

“Remember what he said the night he left?
A proper orb, one that doesn’t spin madly
to evade the light.”

“Mercury!” gasped Ferris.

THE

“There was a meteor shower about a month
ago,” Raven recalled. “Meteors that came
from Mercury’s orbit. Probably half a dozen
struck the Earth. Bob, they weren’t meteors.”
He repeated what he had said that other night.
“This is invasion.”

Ferris looked back at the scope. “The con-
tours are going,” he said.

Raven bent over the viewplate. The fa-
miliar peaks and valleys of the Moon were
almost gone. As he watched, he fancied he
could see the easy flow of brilliance that was
making the Moon’s surface as smooth and pol-
ished as a marble. Even through the tremen-
dous eye of Mount Palomar, it was now im-
possible to see more than a ripple on the
gleaming sphere.

He looked at Ferris. “It’s supposed to be
only a quarter bright,” he said. “The rest
of it’s shining by its own light.”

“Look now!” Ferris said excitedly.

Raven’s eyebrows met in a black diagonal
across his forehead. Upon the luminous face
of the Moon, new lines were showing. Not the
line of contour shadow that had once marked
the satellite, but flat black marks such as a
child might draw to form a picture. They
were very faint, and he thought they would
not be visible to a less powerful telescope than
this one.

“See it?” asked Bob Ferris.

“Yeah,” said Raven, scowling at the view-
plate. “It’s complete, even to the wide smile
and the black mole on his chin.”

“Well, Dr. Raven, that ought to ease your
mind,” Ferris said. “Your invasion turns out
to be a new man in the Moon.”

“Does it ease your mind to know there’s a
creature capable of turning himself into a
spaceship and traveling through the void?”
rasped Raven. “Does it make you feel secure
to know there may be others like him on Earth
right now— inhuman monsters that devour
metal and change their shapes into anything?
Do you enjoy knowing that the cosmic barrier
is rifted — that the moat of space is breached?”

Ferris wasn’t paying much attention.

“Just imagine,” he said. “No more dark
nights.”

END.

75

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

GOD'S FOOTSTOOL

By Malcolm Jameson

YOV may have heard the Earth was round. More correctly, that if 8 cm
“ oblate spheroid.” But ij you think that’s a definite shape, or that we know
the shape of the planet even, this fact article may make things a little less
clear. Saying "The world’s all awry” is stating a fact, not an impression!

Illustrated by Jameson

We scienee-fictionists become so intent on
inventing and exploring strange and fantastic
other-worlds that we are apt to forget that
the one we live upon is still far from being
completely known. It will surprise many to
be told that an elemental dimension such as
the Earth’s diameter has yet to be determined
with exactness. When it is considered that
that dimension happens to be the yardstick
by which we have settled upon the dimensions
of the Universe, it will be apparent how im-
portant it is. For from it as a base we have
triangulated upon the Sun, Moon and plan-
ets and determined the size, distance and or-
bits of all the principal members of our own
solar system. From the far longer base line
of our own orbit — as determined above — we
have triangulated on the nearer stars. And
from those figures we have calibrated such
ultramodern measuring devices as the spectro-
scope with which we probe the outer reaches
of space. Any error in our primary base line
becomes magnified as we reach out from it.
A few hundred meters of inaccuracy here be-

comes a few trillion miles on the way to the
Clouds of Magellan.

The difficulty lies in the fact that there is
no way of directly measuring our own diame-
ter. It must be computed from still shorter
base lines carefully measured on the ground.
This computation becomes difficult for the
reason that so far we do not know the shape
of the Earth. Exactly, that is. We were told
as children that it is an “oblate spheroid” and
has a mean diameter of seven thousand nine
hundred eighteen miles. But how oblate?
And is it regular? And how many diameters
were used to make up the mean? The an-
swers are that we are not yet in agreement as
to the degree of eccentricity of the oblateness;
that apparently the “geoid” is not regular, since
there are unaccountable flattenings and bulges
here and there — not all measured; and that
there are at least three distinct dimensional
axes giving as many basic diameters. Between
those extremes there are as many individual di-
ameters as there are places.

Mankind has been struggling with this prob-
lem for close to three thousand years. If we

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

76

1 .

FM. I. It would be a help to surveyors if “ straight down” meant
something fairly definite everywhere on Earth. But a range of moun-
tains, the flattening of the planet — lots of things help bolix the works.

could pick up the Earth as we would a ball
bearing and place it between the jaws of a
cosmic pair of calipers, there would be no
problem. Oh, if we had suspected sooner that
the Earth was something other than a sphere,
a great deal more of progress could have been
made.

The early Greek philosophers were practi-
cally unanimous in the belief that the Earth
was round. Thales of Miletus, along about
600 B. C., was the first to clearly expound
the theory; and Anaximander, in the very next
generation, made the first globe. A few hun-
dred years later we find Dicaearchus comput-
ing latitudes by measuring shadows at noon
and constructing crude stereographic maps of
the world. All these men went on the assump-
tion that the Earth was spherical and that the
Sun and Moon were also spheres, revolving
about it. But they could not bring them-
selves to believe that the Earth could be as

large as their rough measurements indicated
it to be, and in consequence their little geo-
centric cosmos was woefully out of scale.

Two and a half centuries before the be-
ginning of the Christian Era, Erastosthenes
came on the scene. He was primarily a poet
and a dramatist and librarian of the great li-
brary at Alexandria, but he was also interested
in cartography and therefore in astronomy. He
is called the Father of Geodesy because he
was the first to make an accurate estimate of
the Earth’s true size. He knew that if you
measure a considerable arc of any great cir-
cle on a sphere it is possible to compute all
its other dimensions. So he undertook to
measure an arc of slightly over seven degrees
of the meridian passing through Alexandria.
Having been born in Syene, some four hun-
dred odd miles up the Nile and nearly due
south of Alexandria, he recalled that at noon
on a midsummer’s day objects there cast no

77

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

shadows. So he took Syene to be under the
Tropic, and therefore directly beneath the Sun
on the day of the summer solstice. By observ-
ing how far the Sun was from his own zenith
on the same day, he would know the difference
in latitude between the two places. Using
a gnomon — or shadow-throwing stick — he
found that to be 7° 13'. Then, by referring to
the cadastral maps of the lands between,
which had been made by the Egyptian tax
collectors, he computed the length of the arc
on the ground.

There were errors in all his work, since
Syene and Alexandria were not quite on the
same meridian and also Syene was thirty miles
or so from the Tropic. Likewise, his compu-
tation of the distance was probably inaccu-
rate. But his results were astonishingly good.
He found the plane of the ecliptic to be 23° 51',
or within twenty minutes of what we know
it to be today. He stated the length of a de-
gree of latitude to be 61.945 miles, which is
off only three and one half percent from the
figure 59.8 used now.

His work enabled Hipparchus, who followed,
to vastly improve the astronomy of the time.
Ptolemy rounded out the job by discovering
the effects of atmospheric refraction on ob-
served altitudes of celestial bodies, and by de-
vising a plausible and ingenious theory of the
solar system. The Ptolemaic theory was
wrong, but it worked well enough for the times.
It is one of the great tragedies of the human
race that at about this point the beginning
of the Dark Ages ensued For more than a
thousand years all the splendid work of the
early Greeks was lost, and the blight of super-
stition fell upon the world. The infant sci-
ences of geodesy and astronomy became in-
terdict. Later they had to be begun all over.

During those bleak and barren years all
work did not stop, but unhappily we have lost
the record of it. One Caliph Abdullah al
Mamur caused a considerable arc of a meridian
crossing the Plains of Shinar in Mesopotamia
to be measured, and other Arabs carried on
elsewhere. But the Western world had to
await the coming of Galileo and Copernicus
before picking up the thread again. Then
came Keppler, Newton and Huygens. And
with them the modem concept of the solar
system, the telescope, and the famous New-
tonian theories of motion and gravitation.

However, it was left to a comparative un-
known — a Dutchman named Snell — to upset

.the apple cart and shake these theories to their
foundations. He was a surveyor and wrote
in Latin under the name of Snellius, or Eras-
tosthenes Batavus. It was he who rediscov-
ered the law of refraction and other refine-
ments of observation, but his most significant
work was the completion of an elaborate sur-
vey of the Low Countries, in the course of
which he had carefully measured several de-
grees of their principal meridian. The year
was 1615, which may be taken as the starting
point of modern geodesy. What hurt about
bis findings was that if they were to be ac-
cepted as accurate, then the accepted notion
of the size of the Earth was wrong.

Newton and Huygens read them and were
disturbed. After considerable thought, New-
ton finally made the admission that perhaps
the Earth was not a sphere, but something else
— say an ellipsoid like the onion-shaped planet
Saturn. After all, their computations had
been based chiefly on measurements taken in
Mediterranean Europe and northern Africa.
The area was not large enough to develop
any appreciable flattening as one approached
the pole or increasing curvature toward the
Equator.

A glance at the accompanying figure will
show at once the predicament one finds him-
self in when he finds himself on a relatively
huge — as to himself, that is — body whose size
he can only compute from piecemeal measure-
ments and whose precise shape is unknown to
him. Given good telescopes, a knowledge of
the phenomenon of atmospheric refraction,
and a fair approximation of horizontal paral-
lax, the determination of latitude presents lit-
tle difficulty. By careful observations the al-
titude of celestial bodies at the moment of
meridian transit, corrected for date, he can
compute it directly. If the Earth were the
simple sphere the Alexandrian Erastosthenes
assumed it to be, and if his observations had
been carried out with sufficient accuracy, no
more would have to be done. But the figure
shows the problem Snell uncovered. On the
circle CQ all the degrees of latitude are the
same length; on the profile of the oblate spher-
oid OQ the degrees get progressively longer
as the pole is approached; on the prolate
spheroid LQ the reverse is the case. The only
way our surveyors and astronomers can find
out which — whether onion, billiard ball, or
lemon — they are standing on is to take sam-
plings of the lengths of various arcs of the
meridian at all latitudes.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

78

We know now that the Earth is shaped like
a roundish onion that has rolled down the cel-
lar stairs and been battered slightly in the
process. But they did not know it then. We
do not know all about it yet, though the first
serious effort to find out was begun about
1750. The kings of Spain and France had
been induced to sponsor the appropriate ex-
peditions, since in such world-wide undertak-
ings international co-operation is essential, and
in those days any major effort could only be
made at the whim of a king. They authorized
a joint expedition to the Spanish possession
of Peru, which then included what we know
now as Ecuador. La Condamine was in
charge, and his task was to measure three de-
grees of a meridian adjacent to the Equator.
At the same time, one Maupertuis went to
Lapland to measure an arc from the top of
the Gulf of Bothnia to the Arctic Sea. Wildly
varying degrees of eccentricity were arrived
at and it was apparent that the more they
measured the less they knew. For the Mau-
pertuis figures indicated that the Earth was
not an oblate spheroid as postulated, but a
prolate one.

The surveyors turned back to the more con-
venient middle latitudes. There they meas-
ured the ten degrees of arc lying betwen Barce-
lona and Dunquerque, then offset the line and
ran up Britain with it as far as the Shetlands.
By 1792 the scientists thought they had the
answer. Lavoisier and others worked out the
metric system with the meter as its base —
supposedly exactly one ten millionth of the
polar-equatorial distance. In 1801 Napoleon
solemnly promulgated the system; the meter
was the last word in accuracy. That it was
not, but only a fair approximation, was due
to several causes. For one, the profile of the
Earth had other tricks up its sleeve that the
French savants hadn’t dreamed of. More-
over, their methods, judged by modern stand-
ards, had certain crudities. But more will be
said of methods a little later, and of the subtle
problems that are forever rising to plague the
surveyor.

As great wars invariably do, the Napoleonic
Wars brought an abrupt stop to all sciences
depending upon international co-operation.
But the moment they were over, the geodecists
were at it again. This time they bit off the
biggest hunk yet — the measurement of the
long arc of land meridian stretching from the
mouth of the Danube in the Black Sea straight

FIG. 2. Not-so-simple, but fairly ac-
curate way to go from Point A to Point D.
For the exacting work of the Coast and
Geodetic Survey, this is almost the only way.

79

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

up through Russia and Finland to the Mur-
mansk coast. That arc is over twenty-five
degrees long and has the added virtue of run-
ning over plains country most of the way.
Yet it took from 1816 to 1855 before the work
was done. They learned more about the
geoid, but ran into a puzzling flattening in
the higher middle latitudes. So they went on
to Spitzbergen and measured the short arc
available there. In the meantime, work had
been done in other countries, among them the
United States.

Still the answer eluded them, though as
early as 1841 the figure known as the Bessel
Spheroid had ben adopted as the ideal one
of reference. No one today accepts the Bessel
figure as the correct one, but the surveyors
of Europe still cling to it, chiefly for the rea-
son that it seems to fit the contour of Europe
fairly well, and more practically because they
have mountains of tables and computations
based on it and the shift to a more ideal one
would be impossibly costly. Our own Coast
and Geodetic Survey uses the Clarke Spheroid
of 1866, which is somewhat flatter than the
Bessel one, but conforms more closely to this
continent. The true spheroid is thought to
lie somewhere in between. In the meantime —
and between wars— the surveyors of the world
plod on, doing a little here and a little there
and begging their governments for appropria-
tions.

The task is truly stupendous and probably
will never be completely done. The geoid they
envisage is the figure the Earth would pre-
sent if it were covered wholly by water. We,
therefore, take the mean levels of the oceans
as they exist as our starting point. That alone
is a sufficiently hard task, as the oceans rise
and fall twice daily with the tides, and pre-
vailing winds pile up water for weeks at a
time where it should not be. But by work-
ing patiently over the years with many tide
gauges and duly correcting the results for the
phase of the Moon and other things, a work-
ing basis for a beginning has been fairly well
established. We think we know with some
exactitude what we mean by mean sea level.
But the moment the geodecist starts inland,
his troubles begin.

The land is not flat. Vast areas of it are
in accessible. Worst of all, its composition is
far from being homogeneous. The last trait
is more troublesome than would at first appear,
for the lack of homogeneity of the land masses
has a disturbing effect on g, the value of the

acceleration due to the force of gravity. Which
is unfortunate, for g has other uses than merely
telling how fast things fall. It is, or should
be, an infallible way of determining the ele-
vation of land.

Any high-school student knows that g is a
reliable constant and that its value is thirty-
two feet per second. But the simple, round
figure given in our intermediate physics text-
books is an oversimplification of the fact; it
is at best a mean, or a theoretical value. To
find what g actually is at any particular spot
requires the swinging of a pendulum of known
characteristics for many weary hours and
counting the total swings against time. In
the past few decades surprising results have
been obtained.

Generally speaking, the force of gravity
varies inversely with the distance from the
attracting body. Therefore, since the Polar
semidiameter is less than the Equatorial, we
may expect objects to fall faster over the poles
than at the Equator. They do, and also for
the reason that g is tempered somewhat by
the centrifugal force applied by the Earth’s
spin — though our planet’s angular speed of
rotation is only half that of the hour hand of
a watch. So g is a function of latitude. And
also of elevation, for a mountaintop is farther
removed from the center of the Earth than
the seashore. But pendulum experiments show
variations due to the density of the underly-
ing crust of the Earth. It may surprise many
to learn that the ooze of the ocean bottoms,
cubic mile for cubic mile, is far heavier than
our seemingly massive mountains. That is
the reason the mountain ranges have been
squeezed upward. The g over Nebraska and
Missouri is more out of proportion than over
the Rockies, due to the denser sedimentary
soil beneath.

It follows from that, that while g is an ex-
tremely useful adjunct in surveying, it is only
one more tool. Coupled with other surveying
methods, it is a check and it also tells us some-
thing of the nature of the substrata. The
result is that the geodecists assist the geolo-
gists and vice versa — each assisting the other
in making approximations, then further re-
fining their observations.

There are other methods of telling elevation,
such as vertical triangulation — which is not
practicable except in rugged country — and the
use of the barometer. But the barometer is
even more subject than g to local conditions,
varying as it does with humidity and tempera-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

80

ture and more obscured causes. In conse-
quence, the surveyer has had to perfect spirit
leveling. In its highest form it is called “pre-
cise leveling.” The standards for that are high.
No line of levels is acceptable to the Coast and
Geodetic Survey where the probable error ex-
ceeds a millimeter to the kilometer. And in this
connection we must bear in mind that the ele-
vations of the Earth are not like the elevations
of the various layers of a layer cake, but like
the differences between the outer and inner
shells that make up an onion. The levels are
actually observed as tangents to the surface
of the Earth at the point taken, but if carried
faithfully and far enough, would result in gross
errors. How gross will be at once apparent
when one remembers that the Earth’s surface
falls away from the tangent at the rate of six
hundred feet in the first thirty miles, or
twenty-four hundred 'feet in double that dis-
tance! The surveyor, therefore, has to be con-
stantly correcting for that drop due to curva-
ture, even while he is trying to determine just
what that curvature is. Higher surveying is
something like trying to hoist one’s self by his
bootstraps.

Yet, is it necessary to run the levels inland,
for it is inland that the measurements of the
meridian can only be made, and those meas-
urements must later be reduced to sea level
— whatever that really is. The problem looks
insuperable, but marvelous accomplishments
have been made. But essentially the program
for the past three centuries has been this:
make an assumption; measure; correct assump-
tion; measure; recorrect — and on and on. The
ultimate approximation is still a long way
ahead of us.

To get back to the business of the measure-
ment of an arc of a meridian itself, let’s di-
gress a moment from method to resume the
history of the study of the world from where
we left it with the establishment of the two
principal geoids of reference. In 1898 the gov-
ernments of Mexico, the United States, and
Canada, made a mutual agreement to meas-
ure that portion of the Ninety-eighth Meridian
that lies in their respective territories. It is
the longest possible one to be found on land
in North America, being over sixty degrees
long and extending from within twenty degrees
of the Pole to the Pacific a little south of
Acapulco, Mexico. It also possesses the ad-
vantage of running over plains country much
of the way, crossing as it does the Province

of Manitoba, our prairie States and consider-
able fairly even country to the south. A great
deal of work has already been done on this
job — and on many others, at the same time —
but it is a task of great magnitude and can-
not be finished without a great deal of time
and money. A glance at some of the things a
field party has to do on a primary triangulation
will show why.

Let us say that it is desired to measure the
meridian from A to D as shown in the No. §
Diagram of the figure. Assume that the arc
is about ten degrees, or roughly six hundred
miles, and that a range of mountains, a forest,
a considerable lake, and a big city lie between
its ends. It is manifestly impossible to meas-
ure the distance directly along the ground, so
it must be done indirectly by triangulation.
That will require two or more base lines —
one to start from and the others as checks —
which will not necessarily have to lie on the
meridian itself — as shown — but at any con-
venient nearby place. Since the geographical
co-ordinates of the end points A and D must
be known to three decimal places of seconds
of latitude and longitude, and the distance be-
tween them with an uncertainty of less than
one part in a million and a half — which tol-
erance amounts to about half in inch every
fifteen miles — the surveyer must lay out his
base lines with the utmost care.

The end points will have to be located geo-
graphically by observations on celestial bodies.
That is usually done at night. The latitude
is determined by observing the altitude of se-
lected stars at the moment of their meridian
passage; the longitude by the time of that
passage. We have the advantage of our an-
cestors in now possessing accurate star tables,
but are especially fortunate in the matter of
time. Formerly chronometers were depended
upon. They still are, but now they may be
checked daily or oftener by radio buzz.

The most laborious part of the base line
establishment is the actual measurement of
it. The site must be level, and since level
stretches of several miles in length are rarely
to be found, it must be made level. That is
done exactly as it would be done for a no-
grade section of railroad — by cut and fill. Once
the site is leveled, the measurement can start.

In the earliest days that was done by drag-
ging chain or tape, but the best tapes stretch
with pull and expand with heat, and however
carefully both sources of error are measured
and compensated for, the residual errors are

81

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

FIG. 3. “A man walked due south five miles, then
due east five miles, then five miles due north and
wound up where he started ,” says the bram teaser.
Maybe so — but he wasn’t on this planet if he did!

intolerable. Then came the day of the Invar
steel ice-packed bar, but even that has been
superseded. Invar steel has a remarkable low
coefficient of expansion, and when housed in
a tube of crushed ice with only the polished
faces of the end of the bar exposed to the
outer air is very constant in length, but yet
less reliable than the perfectionists of the
Coast and Geodetic Survey could bear. To-
day they use the Duplex Measuring Rod,
which is more accurate and does not require
expensive and often impossible icing.

This rod really consists of two rods — tubes,
rather — one of brass and the other of steel,
set close together in a common housing. The
whole, some five meters long, rests on a pair
of tripods with leveling heads such as support
theodolites. The ends of the rods protrude
just a little and may be extended slightly by
adjustment knobs fitted with verniers that
may be read under a microscope. Two Du-
plexes are carefully lined up at the start, al-
most in contact with each other, and leveled.
Then the tubes are brought into bare con-
tact by means of the knobs, brass to brass
and steel to steel. They are allowed merely
to touch; pressure would shorten them! The
exact temperatures and the lengths used are
noted, then the rear rod is switched forward
and the line extended.

The virtue of this arrangement is that two
simultaneous lines are run, one with rods of
brass, the other of steel. Since both metals
expand at different rates, the gross lengths
of the two lines will not be the same. But
the difference of the expansion of the two rods
— expansion being a highly reliable phenome-
non — tells the surveyors the temperature to
more decimal places than they could hope to
learn by direct measurement of it. So, when
they apply their temperature corrections, they
are not a great way from being right.

An interesting feature of this Duplex rod
is that the tube wall thickness of each tube is
based on that metal’s conductivity and also
with regard to its specific heat. Moreover,
each rod is nickel-plated, so that they will
then have equal power of absorbing and radiat-
ing heat. The resultant expansions, there-
fore, are strictly comparable.

The surveyors may measure and remeasure
the base line a number of times, averaging the
results, but once they are satisfied with it,
they are ready to proceed with the triangula-
tion proper. By then the “signals” will have
been built at strategic points all over the coun-
try they are to cover. A signal is something
like a tripod oil derrick, except that it is built
double, one tripod within the other, and with-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

82

out mutual contact. The purpose of the
double construction is to permit the observer
to mount his instrument atop the inner tower
while standing himself on the outer. This is
to keep his pulse and breathing and shifting
of weight from time to time from jiggling the
theodolite. The signal is also fitted with a
carefully centered flagpole or other sighting
point, so that it may in its turn be observed
from another station.

The observer climbs to his station, sets up
his theodolite, carefully shields it with a big
umbrella, and starts to work. The umbrella
is to keep direct sunshine off his instrument,
as otherwise the tripod leg on the sunny side
would keep expanding and pushing the theodo-
lite out of level. A great deal of work is done
at night, the reason being that it is possible
to see lights a great deal farther than day
signals — a necessity where continuous hazy at-
mosphere is encountered.

A theodolite is a glorified engineer’s tran-
sit, being larger, heavier and far more accu-
rately built and graduated. They are carried
in padded boxes and handled like babies, and
are subject to many field adjustments which
it would be tedious to describe here. It is
sufficient to say that by the time they have
been put into operation, they are as level and
as accurately pointed as human ingenuity can
do the job.

The observer next proceeds to measure the
angles between all the other signals in sight
of him, going entirely around the horizon. But
he takes them one by one, measuring each
angle hundreds of times. He gains a great deal
in accuracy by accumulating his observed
angles, rather than adding up a great many
and averaging the results. This he does by
manipulating his two azimuth plates so that
each observation is added to the sum of its
predecessors. An instrument large enough to
be read to fractions of a second of arc would
be too heavy to lug around, so the fractions
are arrived at by dividing the sum of a great
many observed angles by the number of them.
Thus, what would appear as a thirty-degree
angle to an ordinary engineer, equipped with
a transit whose vernier only reads to half min-
utes, would come out to be 30° 00' 06.14 to
a geodetic engineer who has a theodolite whose
vernier can be read only to the nearest second.
That is because he has observed that particu-
lar angle one thousand times and the accumu-
lated total is 3001° 42' 22", which divided by
a thousand gives the above.

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ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

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83

To make dead sure that he has it right,
he then goes at it backward and unwinds his
angle! The result ought to be 00-00-00, but
rarely is. So he has a second thousand read-
ings to average with his first. Then to the
next angle, the next and the next, until he is
back to where he started. He has finished at
that station.

AU but his notes, that is. The sum of those
angles must be 360°, plus or minus nothing.
He may very well have an excess or shortage
of a second or a fraction thereof. He will,
therefore, doctor all his angles slightly by dis-
tributing the error among them. Then he goes
on, station by station, until they are all done.
It may take years for him and his mates to
get from one end of their net to the other,
depending on their luck with the weather,
the size of the net and the number of men
employed. But eventually there will come the
day when they tie in to the base line at the
far end.

The computation begins at this point —
some of it in the field, most of it at head-
quarters at Washington. The interior angles
of a plane triangle have to add up to 180°,
but the interior angles of a spherical triangle
may add up to a lot more. On this earth, as
soon as a triangle gets to be as big as about
seventy square miles, it rates another second.
The bigger the triangle, the greater the
“spherical excess.” So our field man checks
over all his triangles and has to do some more
doctoring. It may seem paradoxical, but
.while the sum of the angles about a single
point remains the same, the triangles may have
anything in them. He has to know whether
they are approximately right before submit-
ting them to the boss.

The computers at the head office check
everything and compute from one terminal
base line to the other through various routes
of selected triangles. They are very likely not
to come out the same even though a geodecist
scorns anything briefer than a seven-place log
table. There will be discrepancies in the
lengths of the legs of the various triangles
depending upon the approach. At length,
when all the preliminary computation is done,
the intricate mathematical critique known as
the Theory of Least Squares Adjustment is
applied. That reveals the weak lengths in
the chains and where the greatest likelihood of
error exists. With those clues at hand, the
computers proceed to distribute the errors in

the proportion indicated. In the end final
values are assigned and the field notes filed
away.

Such Primary Triangulation nets cover
many parts of our country. They are linked
together by Secondary nets, the establishment
of which are less exacting. They are further
filled out by a system of Tertiary nets where
the standards are even lower, but yet far
higher than those by which ordinary land sur-
veyors and other engineers work. Finally, the
Geologic Survey fills in the grids with topogra-
phy, which is tied to the entire basic struc-
ture. At last the maps are published and
made available to the nation. Civil engineers
of every kind make use of them, whether to
locate railroads or highways, or to compute
drainage areas for flood-control projects or
culvert design; and State and county engineers
tie to them when establishing boundaries. The
practical value of the work done by these un-
publicized government agencies alone justi-
fies the meager appropriations on which they
work. For the cost to the country of careless
or ignorant basic survey work is far greater
than is generally realized.

As an example of the consequences of crude
work of our forebears, I shall mention one ex-
ample, for it is a typical one of what breeders
of grief and litigation sloppy surveying can
lead to. It promises to give rise to conten-
tion for years to come.

The eastern boundary of the Texas Pan-
handle, which separates that part of the State
from the State of Oklahoma, is defined as the
one hundredth degree of longitude west of
Greenwich. The line in question has been a
boundary for more than a century; the above
definition is rooted in historical fact. It was
so described in an old treaty between France
and Spain, concerning the boundaries between
the possession of their territories Louisiana
and New Spain. It has been persistently con-
firmed by later treaties between their suc-
cessors— between the United States and Spain,
after the Louisiana Purchase; between the
United States and the Republic of Texas; and
eventually between the United States — acting
for the Indian and Oklahoma Territories — and
the State of Texas. The boundary has always
been the One Hundredth Meridian. Early
surveys located it and marked its corners. The
early surveys happened to not only be wrong,
but badly wrong. They not only marked it
as being many hundreds of feet west of where

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

84

it really is, but skewed it. And that is how
the trouble began. %

Ordinarily, a boundary dispute between two
States is a matter of small moment to anyone
but the fiscal authorities of the States them-
selves, since what is transferred amounts
chiefly to the authority to levy taxes. But
when Texas wins an award in an important
border dispute, it is a different matter. For
Texas, alone of all the States, entered the
Union late and as a sovereign nation. She re-
served her public lands to herself, with the
result that the United States does not own, or
ever owned, a single acre of Texas public
lands. Now, the validity of a deed derives
from the validity of the original land patent
from which it springs. So when it was dis-
covered that this more than hundred-mile strip
of land was not in Oklahoma but in Texas,
there was hob to pay. Though in parts of
it there are producing gas and oil fields, every
single landowner on it finds that he does not
own his land, and never owned itl For the
original grants of land were made by the
United States government, which was without
the right to make them. The Texan who dis-
covered the error made haste to purchase the
entire tract from the land office of that State.
Now what?

Endless litigation, apparently. The su-
preme court of the United States has already
issued its final ruling on the subject. The
boundary is wherever the One Hundredth Me-
ridian is, not where someone may have sup-
posed it to be. The survey has been made
and the boundary moved. All taxes previ-
ously paid to Oklahoma were erroneously paid;
any income derived from the land by its former
occupants is recoverable by someone — maybe.
The situation looks to this writer like a law-
yer’s paradise. And there you are — the re-
sults of careless field work.

Having digressed to the extent of relating
that one case — though there are many thou-
sands of others — one thing more should be
mentioned in connection with Geodesy. That
is the item known as Back Azimuth. If the
direction of B from A is its azimuth from A,
then A’s direction from B is known as the
back azimuth. They are not merly directions
in reverse — that is, if B is southeast of A, then
A is not northeast of B. Not ever. If they
are close together, the discrepancy will not be
much; if they are distant from one another,
the discrepancy is enormous. This is a harder

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85

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

thing to explain to the layman than why you
skip a Wednesday, or have two successive
'Wednesdays when you cross the International
Date Line. But I’ll tackle it.

It happens that on certain special great
circles and in certain special cases, back azi-
muth is exactly 180° different from azimuth.
Points on any meridian may be due north or
south of one another; points on the Equator
may be east or west of one another. That’s
all. There are no other special cases. Any-
where else, or in any other direction — even on
those selected circles — the direction coming
back differs from that going.

To try and clear that up, I am going to
use a silly so-called brain teaser now current
as the horrid example. It goes like this: “If
you walked five miles due south, then five
miles due east, then five miles due north and
wound up where you started from, where are
you? Why, at the North Pole, of course.”
Wrong. All wrong. The creator of that little
gem was blissfully unaware of back azimuth,
and therefore the fallacy in his brain teaser.
Let’s have a look at it.

Figure 3 of the diagram represents a five-
mile circle about the Pole. It makes a very
handy illustration, for at the Pole the con-
vergence of the meridians is most obvious, and
also the small area involved makes it possible
to treat the situation as if it occurred on a
plane figure and not a spherical one. So we
will trace the Polar wanderer and see where
he comes out.

He walks due south to A. There he turns
due east. Due east would be at right angles
away from north. If he goes five miles in
that direction, he will wind up at B. Very
well. He’s at B. Now, if he goes due north
from there for five miles, he will arrive at C,
which is about two miles short of the Pole.
The hypothenuse of a right triangle is longer
than its sides, and he can’t improve on it.
Perhaps the author of the stunt intended him
to travel the obviously circular path to B',
but then, that would not be due east, unless
the walker were hairsplitter enough — and
mathematics would permit — to break up his
journey into an infinite number of infinitesi-
mally small steps. No; due east, if he persisted
long enough on the great circle that leads due
east from A, would take him within five miles
of the South Pole and back to A again. Nor
would turning a second right angle at B and
going to C' help the situation any. He would

still be five miles from the Pole. You work
it out; I can’t.

Here’s what’s wrong. B is east of A. But
A is northwest of B. Any conscientious ob-
server station at B with a sight of both A
and the Pole would swear to it. There’s your
back azimuth. Due to the convergence of the
meridians, no great circle crossing them at any
angle whatever, no matter how closely spaced
the meridians, will ever cross successive ones
at quite the same angle.

In connection with that, try to dope out
what direction a place in Siberia, exactly 180°
east of New York and on the same parallel of
latitude, is from New York, and vice versa.
I contend they are north of each other. Cer-
tainly if you went due east from New York
you would never come within thousands of
miles of Siberia. If everything is foggy still,
let me suggest the habit of globe study in place
of maps.

Having dealt somewhat briefly with ways
and means, let’s return to the main theme —
what is the form and size of the Earth? It
may have been observed already that every-
thing said so far deals chiefly with the North-
ern Hemisphere. The studies of our half of
the globe have developed anomalies enough,
since among other things we have learned that
our world is some two hundred fifty meters
thicker ninety degrees away from the Meridian
of Greenwich than it is where Greenwich crosses
the Equator. Is there, then, any reason for
believing that the Southern Hemisphere is
symmetrical with respect to our own? Who
knows? Not much has been done there. Not
much can be done there — there is so much
water and so little land.

Arcs of meridians have been measured in
Uganda and Rhodesia, and no doubt some geo-
detic work has been done in Australia and
South America. There are two likely places
where work might be done, but the fact re-
mains they have not been exploited yet. The
two adequately long meridians lying in the
Southern Hemisphere are in Africa and South
America respectively. The first is the exten-
sion of the old Finland-Danubian line meas-
ured during the first half of the last century.
If that were prolonged, it could be followed
almost to Capetown — the longest continuous
land arc anywhere. The other is the Sixty-
fifth Meridian west of Greenwich which tra-
verses South America from Venezuela to

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

80

Patagonia. It has the defect of crossing al-
most impassable mountain ranges and the no-
toriously inhospitable Valley of the Amazon,
with the further defect of lying in relatively
poor and thinly populated country. From the
present looks of things, it will be another cen-
tury before those lii.es are run. Until then
we can only take it on faith that our Earth
is onion-shaped all over, instead of being a
Burbank cross with a pear.

As things stand now, we know the diameter
of the Earth to within about a half mile — a
mater of no great concern to anyone but a
geophysicist. It is entirely possible that we
shall never hereafter reduce the amount of

that uncertainty by much. Our Mother Earth
is an enigmatic — and unstable — creature. The
same tides that daily sweep the seas also sweep
the supposedly rigid continents. There are,
moreover, vast subsidences and upheavals in
constant progress. Eccentricity and lack of
homogenuity cause our plumb lines to point
to anywhere but the center of the Earth, un-
less by accident. Our poles of rotation wob-
ble, and when they do our latitudes and longi-
tudes wobble with them. Likewise our mag-
netic poles wander about and the agonic lines
between them are in ceaseless motion. It is
going to take some time to get to know our
home planet. Until then, the stairs can wait.

SHE END.

THE ANALYTICAL
LABORATORY

With rather light voting so far — the press
date for this February issue is rather close to
the release date of the December, 1942, issue
— the order of choice on the stories is estab-
lished, but there’s a tendency of big differences
in point scores. The results stand as follows:

Place Stoi-y

Author Points

1. Weapon Shop

A. E. van Vogt

1.5

2. Piggy Bank

Lewis Padgett

2.65

3. Some Day We’ll

Find You

Cleve Cartmill

3.0

4. Johnny Had A Gun

R. M. Williams

3.8

5. Interlude

Ross Rocklynne

5.0

In voting on the stories contained in this is-
sue — and your votes are earnestly requested;
the magazine is intended to interest you, and
I’m not properly equipped with accurate ESP
— remember the Probability Zero efforts need
votes, too. The men who wrote them have a
deep and personal interest in your actions
there; somebody is going to collect a twenty-
dollar check, the particular somebody being de-
termined by your votes as to who’s the liar of
the month.

I might add that the only way you can vote
for yourself is to send in a Probability Zero
yarn yourself; then you’re welcome to vote for
yourself. Admittedly it won’t he apt to swing
the decision, but I’m told there’s a considerable
satisfaction in it —

And we can use some really tall tales.

The Editoh.

87

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

v\

PROBABILITY
ZERO

Calling All liars!

BLVE ICE

By Henry Kuttner

“These new Q-type ships are fast,” the ad-
miral said, “but the fastest passage I ever
made was some forty years ago, before they
ever heard of inert drive. The tubs had speed
in them, but we never dared push the throttle
up to the last notch. The technicians said a
human body couldn’t stand the acceleration —
they were wrong, of course. That’s been proved
often enough.”

“Forty years ago, you said?” I prompted,
after a little pause. “That’s a long time.”

“I’ll never forget it, though.” The admiral
stretched out lanky legs toward the fireplace.
“It was a Patrol boat, and I was junior astro-
gator. We were after the Zintara Martian
gang — cutthroats, pirates, and rats. They
fought by ray-burning you in the back. They’d
picked up a vessel somewhere and kept raiding
out by Jupiter, near the main trade routes.
You know what Martians are like — spindly,
tall chaps with faces like parrots and tiny eyes
under retractable lenses. Anyway, the Zintara
gang had raided a radium transport and got
away with six ounces of the stuff. Killed the
crew, too. We caught an S O S and headed in
the right direction. But we lost the skunks.”

“Too bad,” I said.

The admiral didn’t bother to look at me.

“Oh, we found ’em again, by sheer chance, a
week later. Near the Asteroid Belt it was.
Our ship was fast; they didn’t have a chance.
Surrendered without firing a shot. That made
us pretty mad; we knew what the Zintara
gang had done to the boats they’d captured,
and I suppose we wanted a chance to rough
’em up a bit. But they ran up the white
rocket and came aboard without a murmur.
Only they didn’t have the radium with them.

“The Old Man, Larson his name was, talked
to Zintara, He talked convincingly. Zintara
went green and said he’d cached the radium
on a little asteroid somewhere in the Belt.
Yeah, he’d take us there.

“And he did. The prisoners were locked in
the brig and we headed for the Belt. It took
us about twenty hours to reach the asteroid, a
very smooth ball hanging there in space, en-
tirely covered with a coating of what looked
like pale-blue ice. The atmosphere was good,
though thin, and there was fresh water. So
the Old Man ran staggered shifts and all of
us had a chance to get out of the ship. But
the prisoners stayed in the brig, except for
Zintara, who led us to his cache. We got the
radium all right.

“A while later we were in space, heading for
the prison base on Pluto. Approximately ten
hours later we went blind.

“It was that damned blue ice that coated
the asteroid. It didn’t hurt the Martians;

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

88

their vision’s different, and they have those
glassy covers to their eyes. But we got it, all
right. Even the men who had stayed in the
ship at first suffered — they’d caught the trouble
through the ports. Like snow blindness, you
know. And merely temporary. But within
a few hours we were groping around the ship,
completely blind, listening to the medic tell
us that we’d be able to see again in a day or
so. Larson, the Old Man, cursed Zintara,
Mars, and every other planet in the System.
But he wouldn’t send out an S O S. We agreed
with him; we’d have lost face badly. At that,
all would have gone well if the Martians hadn’t
broken out of the brig.

“Somehow, Zintara had smuggled a ray gun
in with him, and at the crucial moment — he’d
timed it exactly, of course — that bloodthirsty
gang came boiling out of their prison, yelling
hell fire and damnation, picking up weapons
out of their racks, and ready to tear us apart
bit by bit. They liked that sort of fighting.
Slaughtering blind men. We were completely
blind — and that’s a handicap.

“I was at the controls when word came
through. Danton, the mate, gave us warning
through the communicator. But, blind as we
were, we guessed what had happened when
we heard the Martians screaming through the
ship — screams that came to us out of a dead,
awful blackness. We couldn’t fight ’em. They
could see and we couldn’t. But we tried to
put up a scrap. The Martians wouldn’t come
to close quarters. They ran away from us,
fired at us from a distance, chopped at our
necks from behind. Oh, well.’* The admiral
sighed, lost in introspection.

Finally I asked the obvious question.

“Eh? How did we — why, I thought you’d
figure that out for yourself. Use your head,
man. Zintara’s gang could see and we couldn’t.
The trick was to get them on equal terms with
us. I just jammed on all the power the ship
had in her gravitors. Even though I was blind,
I knew those controls. We started to go fast.
It didn’t take long to pass the speed we needed.
Then, of course, there was a blackout, and the
Martians were blind, too. We gave ’em hell.”

“Blackout?” I said feebly.

The admiral looked at me wearily. “We
were traveling faster than light, after I’d shoved
on full power for a minute or so. We were
moving at such a clip that the light waves
that came out of the fluorescents were a thou-
sand miles behind us before we could see them.

So?” He spread out his hands. “That’s per-
fectly clear, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. "Ub. ... oh, yes. Per-
fectly!”

EFFICIENCY

By Colin Keith

Excerpt from General Court Martial pro-
ceedings in the case of Eric Strolsund, Chief
Tubeman, Interplanetary Patrol Force, serving
on board the sky corvette Lisette as acting
chief engineer. The charge against him was
that of jettisoning three hundred tons of Gov-
ernment-owned rocket fuel during the flight
from Lunar Base to Oberon.

President of the Court: Strolsund, you have
heard the evidence, and have admitted the act.
Have you anything to say in mitigation of
your acts?”

The Accused: Yes, sir. Plenty. I did it

to save the ship.

The Court: Elucidate.

The Accused: Well, sir, it was this way.

You know the Lisette is an old tub, and we
had requisitions in for her modernization.
Before we left Luna they put the extra parts
aboard, and I was supposed to install them on
the way out. That is what I did. First I
pulled out our old Mark FV inspirators and
stuck in the Eberle High-Life’s. Then we
junked the Morgan exciters and hooked up
the new Universal super model. After that we
wrapped the tube butts with Gilson coils so
as to draw off the radiant heat to supply the
supercharger auxiliaries. And then —

The Court: Don’t be frivolous. All that is
irrelevant and beside the point. Moreover, it
is already a matter of record. So what?

The Accused: The bunkers began to bulge.
I was afraid of the hull’s splitting open and
letting our air out. And since we were making
fuel at the rate of ten tons a day, I thought it
best to heave a few hundred over the side.
That’s all.

The Court: What is the point in mitigation
you were trying to make?

The Accused: Well, sir, it was this way.

Those Eberle High-Life’s are supposed to save
thirty-five percent of your fuel; the Universal
exciters save another fifty percent; the Gilson
coils save another sixty-three percent; and the
rest of the gadgets add up to around forty-one
percent more. If you’ll get. a paper and pencil —

89

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

ivoise is beautiful:

By Fox B. Holden

Chief Staff Surgeon Carhart Manung took a
deep breath and blew hard. Through the
swirling eddies of cigar smoke that he had so
brutally disturbed, he found his chair and sat
down.

The other scientists at the large banquet
table managed to see him, but they thought
twice about escape. Hearing Manung talk
would be preferable to braving the blankets
of smoke that stubbornly obscured the indefi-
nite no man’s land of the sinfully spacious
dining room.

George Burt Edson, head of the Tri-State
Medical Research Bureau, attempted bravely
to grab the conversation first.

He should have known better.

“I say, Manung . . . that’s you, isn’t it?
We . . . uh . . . dispensed with after-dinner
speeches tonight. Sorry you were late for the
dinner. It was a large one, and I’m afraid
none of us are very talkative. It’s . . . heh
. . . nice without noise, though — ” Edson
tried vainly to smile the man into submission.

Manung chuckled from somewhere under his
stiff white collar.

“You’re wrong, my dear doctor. Noise is
beautiful!”

Somebody sighed, and choked. This was it.

“Gentlemen, how do you suppose the Mars-
Venus treaty ever got signed? No. The
Venusians weren’t dying from starvation. The
Martians didn’t have an overpowering fleet.
People will tell you that, but they’re wrong,
gentlemen!”

“Al-l-lright — ” Somebody asquiesced. He
was drunk. “How did it?”

“Well, I was with the man — Gifford Mc-
Westebee — Mac for short — who carried the
secret treaty papers from Mars to Venus.
Radio couldn’t be trusted — if the incensed,
fanatic armies found out about the treaty
before it was officially accepted and agreed to,
they’d’ve revolted against their respective gov-
ernments.

“So two of us were sent to Venus City via
mosquito-rocket. We made our flight all right
— almost. But as we neared the Venusian
capitol, our stern tubes went haywire. Natu-
rally, we tried to make it over the jungle be-
tween us and our goal, but it was no go.

“We crashed, gentlemen — and what a crash!
Right in the middle of the only jungle military

outpost between us and the city! If we were
sighted our atoms would still be floating around
Venus some place, and Venus and Mars’d be
scrapping yet.

“That wasn’t all. Mac’d banged his head a
whale of a wallop on a stern bulkhead — right
above the eyes. I knew it’d mean blindness
if something wasn’t done fast.

“I grabbed my small medical kit which
I’d been farsighted enough to bring along, and
got to work.

“I opened his skull. His auditory and visual
synapses were a tangled mess. Operating even
with ultra-modern equipment and my portable
electronic-microscopes, I knew chances of Mac
seeing again were slim. His hearing was defi-
nitely ruined. He’d be stone-deaf for life.
But I set to work to do what I could.

“There was so little time —

“I operated with desperate speed. In forty-
five minutes the job was completed as well as
I could do it with the equipment I had. Forty-
five minutes, and Mac’s hashed-up nerve
synapses were straightened out again. I knew
he’d be able to see — never normally — but he
would, as I’d feared, be stone-deaf. With such
limited time, however, an expert nerve job was
impossible.”

Someone protested violently.

“If you think we’ll believe that — ”

“That? ‘That,’ as you phrase it, was only
routine and in the line of duty.

“I revived Mac with a special nerve-tonic
treatment, and he seemed O. K. when he re-
gained consciousness. There was no time for
examination or explanation — we struck out
through the jungle immediately.

“It was twenty hours later when we had
crawled, exhausted, to the edge of the outpost.
A hundred more yards, and we would be safe,
gentlemen— -safe to deliver our papers into the
right hands! Miraculously, we had escaped de-
tection —

“I could hear nothing but our hoarse breath-
ing. But, suddenly, Mac’s hand jerked out
and hauled me back — hard.

“ ‘Stop!’ he said. ‘Ahead of us — a patrol!
We almost blundered into ’em! C’mon easy.
We c’n take ’em by surprise!’

“And take them by surprise we did, gentle-
men. Five of the sneaking rats were there —
and if it hadn’t been for Mac’s superb hearing,
we’d’ve walked straight into the sneaking band
of patrolmen. The worlds’d be fighting yet!”

Someone roared protest immediately.

“Superb hearing? You said he was deaf!”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

90

“Well — yes, in the ears. But we found later
that I’d made an awful blunder. I’d crossed
Mac’s visual synapses with his auditory! He
saw the noise of the patrol which I had failed
to hear!”

The paroxysms that followed weren’t from
smoke.

THE ANECDOTE OE THE
MOVABLE EARS

By L. Sprague de Camp

Among the human body’s “vestigial organs,”
the textbooks usually list the scalp muscles
which enable some people to move their ears.
It is taken for granted that this talent is a
use'ess one. Having once had my life saved
by the possession of this faculty, I do not agree.

To begin with, there is a strong strain, in the
de Camp family, of large mobile ears. When
my great-uncle Clarence de Camp — who is still
much alive — was in college about sixty years
ago, a professor who was giving a lecture on
anatomy mentioned the ears and their vestigial
muscles. My great-uncle, who was in the
front row, began gently fanning the air with
his ears like an elephant using its natural
radiators to cool itself. He soon had the class
in convulsions, to the perplexity of the lecturer.

I had never considered the mobility of my
ears an asset, and had regarded their imposing
size as, if anything, a liability, until I went on
the Drinkwhiskey Institute’s Siwalik Pleisto-
cene Expedition in 1932.

One day, while following a trail through the
jungle of one of the lower Siwalik valleys, I
rounded a corner and was horrified to come
upon a full-grown bull Stegodon ganesa. The
stegodons are proboscideans intermediate be-
tween the mastodons and the true elephants.
Males of this particular species are noted for
the hyperthrophy — overdevelopment, to you —
of their tusks, which are thick, nearly straight,
and may exceed a length of twelve feet.

Paleontologists had wondered how the ani-
mals could support such a huge weight of ivory
until our expedition found the answer. The
baby stegodon, as soon as it is old enough, is
trained to run ahead of the old man supporting
his tusks on its back.

This particular bull was unaccompanied by a
young tusk bearer, from which fact I inferred
that he was a rogue male. My suspicions were
soon confirmed when the brute raised his
trunk, emitted a fearful squeal, and started

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91

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

toward me with patently hostile intent.

To give you a full appreciation of my pre-
dicament, let me say that I had exhausted my
ammunition; that the jungle on both sides of
the trail was utterly impassable; and that I
was already so loaded down with specimens
that, in my aged and enfeebled state — I had a
negative age of about seven hundred fifty-two
thousand years — I could scarcely totter. To
make matters worse, my beard had come un-
tied, so that I tripped over it at every step.

In fumbling through my effects for some
means of defense, I came upon a copy of the
“Congressional Record” for 1941. How this
publication came to be there, when it was
not going to be printed for nearly ten years
after our date of departure, I never did figure
out. Time travel produces some bizarre ef-
fects.

In thumbing the “Record” over, I came
across what seemed to be just what I wanted:
transcripts of speeches by Senators Wheeler,
Nye and Tobey. I began reading these loudly
to the onrushing monster, changing the
phraseology a little to fit the situation. I as-
sured the stegodon that, as I had no aggressive
designs on him, he could, logically, have none
on me, and so forth. The proboscidean con-
tinued his charge, and I was regretfully forced
to conclude that he was not amenable to logic.

BRASS

Ouch Department!

Dear Mr. Campbell:

Can it be that your interior artists have
succumbed to the spell of Flash Gordon? Oh,
those monsters! Kramer must work on heavy-
duty sandpaper. Nothing else could give his
drawings that rough-and-ready look that no
comic strip is complete without. However,
with the exception of the illustrations for “Not
Only Dead Men,” Kramer’s work in the No-
vember issue is definitely above par — for him.

Kolliker stands alone and aloof upon his
rocky pinnacle. His work is not only scratchy
but downright had. His creations are still
distinguished by their perpetual look of naive

My fumbljng hands finally found my provi-
sion bag, whose chief contents at that time
comprised one large cheese. I also recalled that
one of the specimens I had captured was a
twenty-foot snake, representing a new species
of the genus Python. These facts gave me a
daring and desperate idea.

I quickly removed the python from the
specimen bag; as he had by now eaten all the
other specimens in the bag, he was torpid
enough to be easily bandied. I got down on
hands and knees, held the python behind me,
and munched on the cheese.

The stegodon, now so close that his shadow
fell across me, slowed his ponderous advance,
as if doubtful. Now was the time to give him
the works. I emitted a shrill squeak and
flapped my ears with all the virtuosity of four
generations of ear-wiggling de Camps com-
pressed into one.

The stegodon gave a scream of terror,
wheeled — knocking down two trailside trees
with his immense tusks — and fled. I had won,
and moreover had established this important
scientific principle: proboscideans in the year

750,000 B. C. were just as afraid of mice then
as they are now! And in me, with my python
tail, my late antagonist saw no doubt the
largest and most repellent mouse of the whole
rodent tribe.

TACKS

astonishment, as if they, too, were surprised at
such magnificent incompetence.

The cover was fairly well done, I thought,
except that it seemed to lack unity. A coherent
painting has a greater virtue than one whose
brush strokes are technically perfect. On the
whole, the cover painting impressed me as
being one which was not well thought out.

Final Impressions on Art Work: Distinctly
subpar. You need someone like Sehneeman,
who was not afraid to express himself in broad
brush strokes. Finlay is out — his work is too
delicate. Wesso’s work is stereotyped — all his
men are twins, and all his women are asinine.

Having dispensed with the hors d’oeuvres,
we can now proceed to the main course — story

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

92

material. I regiet that you have allowed your-
self to drift into a pattern in the selection and
layout of the material. The lead story is in-
variably excellent; “Overthrow” is no excep-
tion. These “Dawn of Great Promise” stories
are right in my personal groove. “Four Little
Ships” comes in second, mostly because I liked
the way Author Leinster handled a difficult
idea. Third place is a scramble between “Not
Only Dead Men,” “Minus Sign” and “The
Gentle Pirates,” with van Vogt skinning
through. “Sand” should be buried under some.

Above all, Mr. Campbell, give us fewer ray
guns, more Time paradoxes, less blood and
thunder, more of Brass Tacks and, most of all,
more emphasis on the social sciences and
psychology. And, please, no more cowboy
stories with Lensmen gallivanting around,
shooting up the place, and raising general
heck. I have had enough! War stories are all
right, but kill as few as possible. Make the
bullets go farther, and shoot fewer of ’em.
But no parallels about Hitler. He stinks no
matter what century you put him in.

More de Camp, please. He can liven up
many a dull day. — Sam Salant, 1919 Eighty-
first Street, Brooklyn, New York.

There’s a change in the handling of interior art
coming up. It will show in about three
months.

Dear Mr. Campbell:

After many years of sitting on the sidelines
I have finally decided to sit down and write a
letter to the editor of s-f’s best magazine.
When your appointment to editor of Astound-
ing was announced I was very sorry, for we
lost our best author, but the last few years
have shown that it wasn’t so bad, after all.

When you took over Astounding was first
among all magazines, but it had very poor
covers, very poor short stories, an extremely
boring readers’ column, and no other depart-
ments. And then look what happened during
the last five glorious years. First came Brass
Ttiks, then In Times to Come, the Analytical
Laboratory, the Mutant editions, better covers,
a definite change to a better class of advertise-
ment and a better arrangement of them, then
the Nova stories, the addition of the mighty
Hubert Rogers, better stories, the long-hoped-
for elimination of Science Discussions, “Sian!”
and finally came the big editions.

This definitely showed that you had a real

interest in the magazine, and this inspired the
confidence of your readers. But, of course, all
is not perfect, for while the covers really im-
proved, the interior illustrations are bad.
Please remedy the situation and Astounding
will be PERFECT.

Now, for the best stories of 1942. This was
the best year in “our” magazine’s history, with
a far better quality of stories than ever shown
before. Here goes:

1. “Asylum,” by A. E. van Vogt. Magnifi-
cent is the only word for this. In fact it is the
third best story published in the last five years,
“Who Goes There” being first and “Sian!”
second. More please!!!

2. “There Shall Be Darkness,” by C. L.
Moore. Miss Moore has consistently shown
herself to be one of the best authors of all time.
One of her stories I’ll never forget is “Greater
Than Gods.” However she writes very in-
frequently; please remedy this unfortunate
state of affairs. “There Shall Be Darkness”
was extremely well written, and very close
behind “Asylum.”

S. “Beyond This Horizon,” by MacDonald.

why not make sure that you continue
to receive this magazine throughout
the year? Don't take the chance that
your newsstand will be sold out— act
now! Simply by filling out this coupon
you can insure a solid year of read-
ing pleasure with your favorite fiction.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
79 SEVENTH AVENUE
NEW YORK CITY

Inclosed is $2.50. Kindly send me a year’s sub-
scription to ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION.

NAME ;

ADDRESS

CITY STATE

93

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Very realistic, and far above last year’s No, 1
story, “Methuselah’s Children.”

4. “Waldo,” by MacDonald. A highly en-
joyable tale by a highly enjoyable author.

5. “Recruiting Station,” by van Vogt. This
opus really had atmosphere. I really don’t see
why it didn’t rate Nova. It deserved it.

S. “Second Solution,” by van Vogt. Mr.
van Vogt has really shown himself to be this
year’s best author, an honor that he shared with
Heinlein in 1940 and with Williamson in ’39.
Last year Heinlein was all alone as king.

7. “Tools,” by Simak. Another nifty, well-
written tale. Simak can always be depended
on to write at least one of the best stories every
year. I will always remember his mighty
“Cosmic Engineers” as among the best serials
ever published in Astounding, and this swell
piece wasn’t far behind that other masterwork.
More Simak, PLEASE!!!

8. “The Weapon Shop,” by van Vogt. This
list is beginning to read, the stories of A. E. van
Vogt. But he certainly deserves it, for not
since the Stuart-Campbell era have we had
such a constantly great author.

9. “Second Stage Lensmen,” by Dr. E. E.
Smith. Tsk-tsk. Here we come upon the truly
..astounding situation of finding a Smith story-
in ninth place for the year. But I don’t think
it was a reflection on the story, it just showed
how good the rest of the tales were. However
this opus might be called a little too super,
though not meriting the attack some of the fans
made on it.

10. “Co-operate or Else,” by van Vogt. And
van Vogt rolls on!

11. “My Name Is Legion,” by del Rey.
Nice suggestion.

12. “Barrier,” by Boucher. Best time story
since “Other Tracks.”

13. “Bridle and Saddle,” by Asimov'. This
was a good year for Asimov. He turned out
some fine yarns. His robot stories are the best
in the field. This piece was extremely good,
with “Foundation” close behind it.

14. “Nerves,” by del Rey. Del Rey is
without a doubt one of the best authors ever
to write for Astounding, and this year he did
some very excellent work. “Nerves!’ was very
good and perhaps it should have rated higher,
but then the competition was very stiff.

15. “Collision Orbit,” by Stewart. Nice
work!!! As you predicted Stewart-Padgett-
Clement were very good. I also liked the
“Twonky.” Tied with this was Murray Lein-

ster’s bit. I’M VERY glad to see Mr, Leinster
back. Keep him!!!

These weren’t all the good stories by far.
In fact there wasn’t one poor story, and yours
is the only mag in the field that can boast this.

Illustrations: The covers were all magnifi-

cent, even the ones without Rogers. Keep it
up. The interiors, however, are another mat-
ter. Can Kolliker, Kramer, et cetera, et cetera.
Keep Orban, however, he’s your only good
artist, the others are lousy. Of course, this
doesn’t include your best illustrator, M. Isip,
but you use him so infrequently.

Other suggestions: Now that it must be

becoming increasingly difficult to get stories,
here is what I think is a good idea. How about
reprinting in every issue one of the best stories
from your back files? You could reprint
Stuart’s marvelous works, the “Skylark” series,
“The Mightiest Machine,” “Invaders from the
Infinite,” “When the Dark Star Passes,” et
cetera, et cetera, by you know who. Then
there are the other mighty classics, “Rebirth,”
“Old Faithful” series. Schachner’s mighty
tales, Corbett’s stories, the “Comet.eers,” et
cetera, et cetera. I know that you could not
only solve the problem of where the stories
will come from, but also increase your sales as
well. How about it— huh?

Well I think it is about time to cut off this
long-winded letter. However, there are a few
more things that I would like to say.

The Probability Zero department is very
good. The best story there of the year was
“Eat, Drink and Be Wary,” closely followed
by “De Gustibus” and “Pig Trap.”

The best authors of the last five years are:

1. Don A. Stuart.

2. E. E. van Vogt.

3. MacDonald-Heinlein.

4. C. L. Moore.

5. Isaac Asimov.

6. Lester del Rey.

7. L. R. Hubbard.

8. L. S. de Camp.

9. E. E. Smith.

10. Williamson tied with Simak.

If you print this letter, please add this: I

would like to get in touch with anyone who
could sell me the June, July and August issues
of the 1938 Astounding, as they are missing
from my files. — Arnold Greenhouse, Leaven-
worth, Kansas.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

94

OPPOSITES— REACT!

By Will Stewart

SMSCONlt of Two Parts. The ship had been built by beings utterly alien
— in thought, in form, in the nature of the very atoms of their flesh. They
were made of contraterrene atoms; their ship was half made of that dreaded
seetee — and full of a hundred death traps left by their alien minds I

Illustrated by Kolllker

At the time, control of the Solar System was bal-
anced on a knife edge of mutually jealous Poioers.
There was Earth , the Martian Reich, the Jovian Soviet
— all, theoretically, working together in the High Space
Mandate . But there was, too , Interplanet, an Earth-
owned commercial corporation that wielded such eco-
nomic power under the Mandate as to approach the
status ef an independent Power. And finally, there
were the asterites — the hard pioneers who had settled
on the asteroids and now wanted their independence
from the rule of the Planets, exerted through the High
Space Mandate,

The trigger that could blow that delicate balance to
clashing bits was the secret of “seetee” — of contra-
terrene matter, matter that is made of positrons and
negatrons and reacts instantly and with atomic vio-
lence when in contact with normal terrene matter of
electron and proton structure.

Drake, McGee & Drake is a company of Asterites
who have an asteroid laboratory where — opposed by
every legal trick possible to Interplanet — they are
trying to find how to handle the explosive, deadly
power of seetee, to tame it into something useful. Cap-
tain Paul Anders, an Interplanet engineer and a cap-
tain in the High Space Mandate, is assigned to investi-
gate the Drake, McGee & Drake set-up — and to find
the secret of handling the untouchable seetee.

He goes to Freedonia , the asteroid laboratory of the
Drakes, guided into a landing — reluctantly — by Ann

O’Banion, daughter of an old friend of the elder Drake,
The guide is necessary; Freedonia is surrounded by
circling bits of seetee meteoric matter — and, because (
the Martian-German, Franz von Falkenberg, made an
out-and-out holdup attack to try to steal their secrets,
the asteroid -now has a band of invisible mines floating
about it in space. On the asteroid he sees the Drakes'
failure — a forging hammer of pure seetee iron. The
huge power hammer is a crude mass of meteoric seetee
iron reused and lowered by paragravity fields to strike
on a massive block of meteoric seetee iron that serves
as the anvil. But it wont work; after half a dozen
blows the huge iron hammer starts rocking in its sup-
porting force-fields, and actually touches the terrene
matter of the supports, releasing a short, violent blast
of gamma rays and the hammer is stopped. The abso-
lute necessity is a bedplate; some kind of rigid, strong
and compact mechanism or shaft by which the two
mutually destructive substances — seetee and terrene
matter — can be bolted into solid alignment. Given that
one thing, the problem of handling seetee could be
licked in a month.

Then, going back to his ship, the " Challenge ” Anders
hears a photophone call from Rob McGee that’s in-
tended for the Drakes on Freedonia. Only because
Anders is himself there can he intercept the tight-
beam photophone. McGee has found a mysterious ob-
ject in space, one he believes is a construction made by
intelligent beings of contraterrene matter who origi -

95

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

nally inhabited the seetee planet that , crashing into
the ancient trans-Martian -planet , gave riee to the
asteroids and their deadly seetee drift. McGee’s found
it — but a Martian warship, evidently under von Falk-
enberg, has followed, and is attacking him. One thing
McGee does report for certain before his photophone
cuts off — he has a perfect seetee-terrene bedplate. Mc-
Gee, in the “Good-by Jane ” had the Drakes’ only ship;
they can’t help him. Anders, with his Mandate cruiser
“ Challenge ” could. Again Ann O'Banion is — reluc-
tantly — forced to pilot him to the place -where McGee
may have been destroyed . Reluctantly not only be-
cause she doesn’t want to help an Interplanet man to
the secret of seetee — which would mean that she and
the other asterites would never regain independence —
but also because of the unpleasant, polyglot crew of
the “Challenge" Commander Protopopov, a Callistonian
Russian, Anders’ second in command, is a fat, stupid-
faced man always finding complex and dubious reasons
behind simple acts, and Ann hates him for it. Anders
isn’t any too keen on him, or the rest of the crew.
But the High Space Mandate law requires that the
Mandate forces be polyglot-mixtures taken from each
planet of the System on which men have established
colonies. Except, of course, the asteroids.

IX.

The huge Callistonian, Protopopov, came
lumbering up the companionway steps to the
bridge. His puttylike face held an expression
of moronic expectancy. He glanced with his
curious animal eyes at the clicking pilot-robot,
and then faced Anders with the bearlike cari-
cature of a salute.

“Yes, commander, we’ve left Freedonia,”
Anders told him. “Now we are bound for an-
other object, unlisted in the Ephemeris, five
hundred million kilometers south of the eclip-
tic. This is an urgent and important mis-
sion.”

“Aye, sir.” The broad stupid face broke
into a sudden grimace of crafty admiration,
“So these Martian agents were preparing an-
other secret base, far out there, for a flanking
attack on the Mandate? Ah, it’s a deep and
clever game you’re playing, captain!” His
small opaque eyes leered knowingly. “And I
see why you’ve installed that pretty little aster -
ite stool pigeon in your cabin!”

Anders tried not to flush. He gave Proto-
popov a cigarette and fumbled with his lighter,
to conceal a wave of savage, unreasoning an-
ger. At last, trusting his voice again, he said:

“True, Miss O’Banion gave us the posi-
tion.”

Protopopov made his bubbling chuckle.

“Aye, you’ve a way with the women, cap-
tain!”

“Commander, this is a dangerous operation.”

Anders couldn’t help Ms voice turning brit-
tle. “In spite of any aid I can get from Miss
O’Banion, we are likely to encounter enemy
forces, either at space or on the object ahead.
We must take all precautions.”

“You are very wise, captain,” agreed the
Callistonian.

“The ship will be blacked out, at once.”
Anders rapped the orders. “The crew will
remain on twenty-four-hour alert. Periscope
lookouts will be doubled. Thermalarm and
photophone pickups will be set to full sensi-
tivity. Gun crews will be drilled daily.”
“Aye, sir.”

“It is quite possible that we may encoun-
ter a Martian warship, trespassing on high
space in defiance of the treaty. If any vessel
is sighted, inform me at once and sound bat-
tle stations. If it is the Martian and he re-
fuses to surrender, we must be prepared to
blow him out of space.”

“Aye, sir,” came that rasping whisper.
“Also, commander,” the Earthman added,
“I’m expecting to sight a small space tug, the
Good-by Jane. Unarmed, but very fast. It
is necessary for us to take her skipper alive,
if possible, because he is believed to possess
information highly valuable to Interplanet.”
“Aye, sir!” The Callistonian made his fat,
moronic grin. “You’re very clever, captain.
You’ll be winning medals and a juicy Inter-
planet bonus for us all!”

Anders left him on the bridge, ate a soli-
tary breakfast in the cruiser’s small ward-
room, and went to sleep on a cot in the chart
room — he hadn’t really started the threatened
chain of evacuations, because he didn’t want
to provide any personal dislike for the inevi-
table official disapproval of Ann O’Banion.

“ ’Smatter, gorgeous?”

It was noon of the second day out, and
they were dining alone in the wardroom — the
conventions of the High Space Guard for-
bade Anders to eat with his subordinate offi-
cers, but he had invited Ann to join him.

At breakfast she had been lighthearted and
charming, as if the voyage were a thrilling
adventure and they no longer need be ene-
mies. But now found her staring at him over
her teacup, in troubled silence.

Her tense brown face met his cheerful ques-
tion with a shy, uncertain smile, as if she
didn’t quite know how to take such adjec-
tives. She looked uneasily at the door.
“NotMng really, captain.” Her voice was

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

96

muted and afraid. “Only I don’t quite like
your fellow officers.”

He stiffened with anger and concern.

“If any of them has been improper — ”

"I didn’t mean that,” she interrupted hast-
ily. “But yesterday I saw Muratori looking-
after you, up the companion steps, as if he
would like to shoot you in the back. Omura
is always polite — much too polite, and you
can’t tell what he’s thinking. And Com-
mander Protopopov — that gurgling laugh of
his just gives me the creeps!”

She leaned urgently over her forgotten
plate.

“How can you trust them, captain?” Her
cautious whisper was taut and anxious. “When
you think of what we’re after — the key to
contraterrene matter! How do you know that
one of them won’t murder you for it?”

He grinned at her solemn concern.

“I can’t trust any one of them,” he admit-
ted cheerfully. “But then, y’see, none of them
can trust any of the others. Divide and rule
— that’s the way Interplanet runs the Man-
date. Set a spy to catch a spy. We aren’t
going to be murdered — so smile again, beauti-
ful.”

But she didn’t smile.

“And I suppose Commissioner Hood doesn’t
trust even you?” she whispered anxiously. “I
mean, if you decided to join us and help get
that bedplate for Drake, McGee & Drake —
all your crew would be against you?”

Anders caught his breath. He was first sur-
prised and then angry and then he laughed.
He saw the moon face of the Venusian-
Cantonese waiter appear inquiringly, and or-
dered another pot of tea. The girl’s serious
brown face turned pink before his laughter.

“Well, bewitching, you’re a little optimist!”
he told her softly, when the waiter was gone.
“I come from three generations of Interplanet
engineers. How d’you think you’re going to
charm me into turning traitor now?”

“I’m not bewitching!” she told him hotly.
She pushed back her plate, and ran out of
the wardroom.

Early on the fifth day out from Freedonia,
Anders climbed the bridge companion, from his
cot in the chart room. Commander Proto-
popov, crouched at the periscope, turned with
a shambling ursine swiftness to face him.

“This object ahead, sir.” The huge exile’s
croaking whisper was deep with excitement.
“I had assumed it to be only a stray plane-

toid, which these Martian agents had occu-
pied for a concentration base against the Man-
date.”

“A logical assumption,” Anders said cheer-
fully.

“But you knew it wasn’t?” The Callis-
tonian lowered his hoarse whisper, confiden-
tially. His crafty animal eyes flickered watch-
fully at the companion; and then he searched
the tall Earthman’s face, with a look of pene-
trating cunning.

Meeting that blank flat stare, Anders almost
shuddered. Despite his careless assurances to
Ann, he wished that Hood’s inside organiza-
tion had been able to find him a different crew.
Men willing to sell their loyalty for Inter-
planet dollars might sell again, for rubles or
rupees or marks.

“Miss O’Banion had hinted,” he agreed
calmly, “that the object might be . . . er . . .
a construction. I understand that it is the
expression of a novel engineering principle.
Our mission is to discover that principle for
Interplanet.”

The putty face brightened.

“Then it really is a Martian fortress?” whis-
pered Protopopov. “But the asterite girl
knows the password? And she is willing to be-
tray it to you?” His broad moronic face broke
into a hideous smile of admiration, and he
brought his immense black-haired hands to-
gether with a startling crash. “Ah, my clever
captain, a pretty woman can keep nothing
from you!”

With desperate effort, Anders managed a
thin smile.

“Forget Miss O’Banion.” His voice turned
brittle again. “Because hostile action is very
probable. It is time to sound the action alarm.
Change the periscope men every thirty min-
utes. Watch for those two ships — the Mar-
tian cruiser and the tug.”

“Aye, sir.” And Protopopov made a mo-
ronic smile, at his own invention. “But the
men do not require the truth. Despite all our
precautions, we may have Martian agents
among them. I shall inform them that the
object before us is the headquarters of a band
of outlaw asterites, who have stolen a secret
process developed by yourself for the manu-
facture of terraforming diamonds.”

“Very good, commander.” Anders grinned.
“Although terraforming diamonds can’t be
manufactured.”

The big Callistonian made his hollow, bub-
bling chuckle. With a bearlike salute, he

97

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

shambled down the steps. Impatiently, An-
ders turned to the periscope. McGee’s object
was swelling now, at last, before the decelerat-
ing cruiser.

The thing was tiny, still. But he could see
the shape of it, bright iu the sun, very sharp
and clear against the gulf of frosty dark be-
yond. And, in spite of all he knew about it,
the sight took his breath.

The object was shaped somewhat like an
egg. His engineer’s mind found the more ac-
curate term, ellipsoid. But the curve of it was
bound, about the smallest diameter, with an
evidently massive rim. Thick supporting ribs
arched up from that, converging toward the
poles. And each pole was a jutting cylinder.

Its color puzzled him. All one end, includ-
ing half the wide equatorial rim, was a dull
rust-red. But the other half, after all the
dead centuries since the Cataclysm, was still
bright as new-polished chromium.

Another feature baffled the quick efiort of
his engineering brain, to read its purposes.
Perhaps the projecting cylinders were twin
air locks. The one-sided polish might have
served for a crude sort of temperature control.
But he couldn’t understand the five golden
spikes.

Slim yellow needles, each about the length
of the smallest diameter, they were thrust
straight out through equidistant ports in the
bright half of the rim. What could they have
been?

Nothing more, perhaps, than some queer
sort of radio antennae. Yet, shining against
the silver-dusted dark, those five spikes kin-
dled in him and awed an eager sense of this
thing’s ancient mystery. They became a chal-
lenge to his engineering intuition, and an en-
igmatic promise of the lost world’s science.

Then he noticed that one of them was bro-
ken. Nearly half of it was gone. For a mo-
ment he couldn’t breathe. Somehow the
realization was almost stunning. But that
broken point was the hollow golden needle he
had seen, in von Falkenberg’s film!

That discovery brought him an awed sense
of this thing’s hugeness — for he had estimated
that broken golden shaft to be a full hundred
meters tall. For a long time, alone with the
muted sounds of the pilot-robot, he tried to
picture the dead builders of it — the beings
that had walked that narrow contraterrene
footway, with its railing far too high for hu-
man use.

He thought the Invaders must have been

something tall and thin, but they were still
beyond imagination. He left that useless ef-
fort, and tried to grasp the human meaning
of Rob McGee’s discovery. What would fol-
low man’s encounter with this alien ghost of
the dead Invaders’ culture?

“Please, Paul!” Ann’s clear breathless voice
brought Anders back from that groping ques-
tion. Anyhow, he wasn’t a social philosopher.
He was just a spatial engineer, with an excit-
ing job to do. The final consequences were
outside his field. “Please, may I see?”

“Take an eye-full, gorgeous.”

He yielded her the periscope, almost grate-
fully. She was fresh from sleep, her tanned
skin glowing from a shower in what had been
his private bath. All her movements had a
boyish freedom, yet she looked delightfully and
perhaps unwisely feminine in the blue silk
lounging garment she had made from a pair of
his pajamas — for all her own luggage had been
unloaded on Freedonia.

He stood watching her, peering so eagerly
into the black hood, moving the vernier con-
trols with brown deft hands. Somehow he
found a curiously pleasing reassurance in her
vital, graceful youth. She was the living anti-
dote to the cold dread he felt, from his first
glimpse of that thing that was so very old.

“So that’s the seetee ship!” Her own eager
voice turned grave and slow, as if she. too,
felt the awful weight of centuries beyond the
time of men. “That’s the machine the In-
vaders built — I wonder what they were?”
But Anders didn’t know.

“And that's where von Falkenberg followed
Cap’n Rob, and trapped him?” She looked
around suddenly, her brown face anxious.
“What happened to him, Paul? Have your
lookouts seen the Jane ?” Her voice turned
thin with fear. “Wfliat happened to Cap’n
Rob?”

“Don’t know, beautiful.” He grinned at
her anxiety. “Our instruments haven’t picked
up either vessel. But that thing ahead is still
hours away, remember, and larger than it
looks. Both ships might be out of sight be-
hind it. And the Martian would be blacked
aut and camouflaged, anyhow, so we couldn’t
see it yet. We’ll just have to wait.”

“But I’m so afraid, for Cap’n Rob.” Her
voice was tense and solemn. “He knows the
meteors and planets, with that gift of his, but
he never understands human beings — maybe
they’re too unreasonable. Cap’n Rob’s so

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

98

simple and trusting, and von Falkenberg is so
clever and ruthless. The Jane wasn’t armed,
and he had a fighting ship. Cap’n Rob just
didn’t have a chance.”

“Cheer up, bright eyes.” Anders wanted to
quiet her alarm. “McGee may have passed
us, somewhere on the way. There’s lots of
room in space, you know, beyond the range of
our thermalarms. He may be back on Free-
donia by now, putting his new bedplate under
that hammer.”

But she turned anxiously back to the peri-
scope.

“No use crying till you know the milk is
spilt,” Anders told her. “Maybe McGee
couldn’t estimate von Falkenberg, but for all
you know von Falkenberg failed to figure him.
Now it’s time to go to breakfast.”

For Luigi Muratori had come to take the
bridge. Moving with his quick, silent limp,
the gnarled, bitter-eyed little Martian-Italian
had reached the top of the companion steps
before they discovered him. He made a nerv-
ous salute, and greeted Ann with an exag-
gerated bow. Giving him the cruiser’s posi-
tion, course, and deceleration rate, Anders
added:

“You know the general orders. The crew
will remain at action stations. So far as pos-
sible, we must be ready for any unexpected
emergency. Watch that object ahead, and in-
form me at once if you see any movement.
If any ship is sighted, maneuver at once to
engage it.”

Muratori made another jerky salute. His
furtive eyes had already flashed at the peri-
scope, burning with a fever of interest. His
dark, scarred face wore an expression of sav-
age intentness.

"Aye, sir!”

Ann O’Banion slipped hastily down the
companionway, ahead of the Earthman. Tak-
ing her arm, he felt a little shiver. She said
nothing, but he could see her frightened dis-
like for Muratori and the other officers.

Breakfast was set for them in the ward-
room. Lifting the silver cover from a dish of
shirred eggs in ham sauce, Ann made a child-
ish little cry of pleasure. Anders grinned at
her.

“Anyhow, beautiful, whatever you think
about the rest of my crew, the chef seems all
right!”

They were still at breakfast when alarm
burst over the ship. Bells clattered, whistles
shrieked, bulkhead doors clanged shut, feet
pounded the decks.

“ ’Scuse me, darlin’!”

Anders took the companion steps by threes.

“A ship, sir,” Muratori reported. “Against
that machine!”

Anders strode to the main periscope. The
machine from the Invader already had grown
a little larger, floating in the black abyss. In
a moment, he found the shadow on the bright
end of it — the tiny-seeming silhouette of a
Martian cruiser.

99 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

AST— 7R

X.

Anders looked and stood erect again, trim
and spare in the black of the Guard. His
brown face wore a slight stern smile, and his
gray eyes lit with a glint of fighting steel.
Briskly he ordered:

“Maneuver 99!”

Muratori’s twisted nervous fingers touched
the keys of the pilot-robot. It clucked and
whirred, very quietly, and the Challenge spun
into an erratic spiral course.

Here beyond the interference of air or
gravitation, the extreme range of spatial guns
was many thousands of kilometers — because
shells, once fired, simply kept on going. Ma-
neuver 99 sent the ship along a complicated
path, intended to keep its position beyond pre-
diction, even by the intricate brass brain of an
automatic range finder.

Anders picked up the telephone.

He found Protopopov already at his post in
the after control room, deep in the ship’s ar-
mored heart. The special function of the
officers there was to direct guns and engines,
while the forward bridge dealt with astraga-
tion. But each room had a complete set of
controls and instruments.

“General order, commander,” the Earthman
rapped briskly. “We have sighted a probable
enemy. The range is still extreme, and suffi-
cient to allow successful evasive action by
enemy. We are closing distance. We shall
engage this ship unless it surrenders when we
break photophone silence.”

“Aye, sir,” came that croaking whisper.

Still decelerating, the cruiser dropped down
a crooked helical curve. Anders didn’t leave
the bridge, but the instruments and the tele-
phone brought him a keen awareness of all
the men and metal of the ship, fused into a
single fighting organism. His mistrust of poly-
glot officers and crew vanished, for the mo-
ment, before a glow of pride.

Ann remained below. Grinning to himself,
Anders supposed that his fellow officers had
somehow conveyed their stiff conviction that
a woman’s place was not upon the bridge of
a ship in action.

At the main periscope, he watched the Mar-
tian, A tiny elongated dot, black as space it-
self, it crept very slowly across ridged, silver-
colored dome. It was like some tiny planet,
he thought, in transit across the disk of a sil-
ver sun.

“It appears to be drifting in a close orbit.

held only by natural gravitation,” he told the
lieutenant commander. "No indication that
our approach has been detected — or even ex-
pected.”

“A perfect target!” Muratori agreed softly.
“Shall we fire without warning?”

“No,” Anders told him. “It will be neces-
sary for us to speak to them — but not until
the conditions of battle are adjusted to our
satisfaction.”

Steadily, the drifting dot grew larger against
that colossal strange machine. It showed no
lights, and bore no visible insignia. The ugly
efficient lines of its flat gun turrets, however,
were unmistakably Martian.

When the range was reduced to an easy
hundred kilometers, Anders swung the Chal-
lenge to center the Martian like a bull’s-eye
against that silver dome. Protopopov re-
ported that the four long guns were trained to
fire. He broke photophone silence to hail the
black ship.

No light answered. The dark ship made no
sign. It merely drifted on, a tiny moonlet of
that immense machine. Something gave An-
ders an uncomfortable prickling sensation, un-
der the back of his trim military collar.

He called again in German, demanding a
signal of surrender. There was no reply. He
tried Chinese and Russian. For five eternal
minutes, the blacked-out ship drifted on. His
voice rapped brittle in the ship’s telephone:

“Both turrets fire!”

The Challenge thrust back, to the simul-
taneous recoil of the four counterbalanced
guns, so that he felt as if the deck had sud-
denly dropped away. Balanced on the balls
of his feet, he peered into the periscope, count-
ing off everlasting seconds.

A live ship might have darted out of the
way, even after the flash of the cruiser’s guns.
But that black vessel merely drifted on, dead
as the tiny moon it seemed. Thirty seconds
dragged away, while half a metric ton of
tritonite and steel hurtled across a hundred
kilometers.

Then the Martian exploded into blue-and-
yellow fire.

“Every shell a hit, captain!” The telephone
brought Protopopov’s hurried croaking whis-
per. “And still he doesn’t answer. Shall we
continue firing?”

Anders felt a decidedly uncomfortable sen-
sation along his spine. Fie still suspected some,
deadly trap set for him by Franz von Falken-
berg, but this seemed just a little too much

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

100

like shooting at a corpse.

"Cease firing, both turrets,” he ordered.

He watched the Martian cruiser. After the
smoke and flame of the shell bursts had dis-
sipated into space, the black silhouette seemed
scarcely changed. One of the flat turrets was
a crumpled ruin, that was all. And still it
drifted on.

“Eh . . . that?”

Anders uttered a startled little cry. The
impact of that crashing salvo, he realized sud-
denly, had changed the drifting hull’s direc-
tion. It had occupied what must have been
a carefully calculated orbit, only a few hun-
dred meters out from that huge machine. The
shells had thrust it toward collision.

He watched, in appalled silence. This was
something he hadn’t anticipated, but now
there was nothing he could do about it. He
had meant to board the wreck, to find what
had happened to von Falkenberg and his crew.
But it was now too late for that.

He thought of something.

"General order,” he rapped hastily into the
telephone. “Martian is going to collide with
that other object. Periscope lookouts will use
ray filters. Better, turn instruments away.”

He snapped the lead-glass prisms into the
optical system of his own periscope. His eye
took a moment to become accustomed to the
reduced illumination. Then he found the
black, battered hull once more.

It seemed to drift with a fateful delibera-
tion. He waited through an eternity of
breathless strain. Then at last the black,
pointed snout of it touched that silver-colored
dome. It plowed a furrow of hot, blue fire.

Slowly, then, as if some unseen gigantic
hand were crushing it to ruin, the cruiser
smashed against one of those immense arching
ribs. Terrible fire dazzled Anders, even
through the filters. He heard the click of the
safety shutter, closing the tube of the instru-
ment.

“Captain, what was that?” came the anxious
croaking of Protopopov. “Did the Martian’s
magazines explode?”

“Doubtless,” Anders told him.

After a dozen seconds, the safety shutter
snapped open once more. Anders blinked and
looked again. A vast cloud of fading red
flame still covered the field of the instrument.
The Martian ship was hurtling back through
that curtain of fire, sagging and twisted, all

one side of it still angry with white incandes-
cence.

The red flame went out — it had been vapo-
rized metal, he supposed, mixed with oxygen
and steam from the ship’s exploding tanks.
The white heat of the shapeless spinning hulk
cooled to canary yellow, to bright orange, and
cherry red. Finally it was black again, plung-
ing forever into space.

Anders studied the scar it had left on that
bright dome. The long furrow still glowed
lividly with heat and secondary radiations.
The huge arching rib was twisted and bent,
with a burning pit where its metal had been
fused and consumed. Yet, so vast was that
machine, the damage seemed comparatively
slight.

The Earthman turned slowly away from the
periscope. He felt a weakness in his knees,
and a chill of sweat across his forehead. His
throat was tense and dry, and the deck seemed
about to drop again. He wanted time to re-
lax. Carefully, he lit a cigarette, and burned
half of it with three long inhalations.

“That seems to take care of the Martian.”
He crushed out the cigarette, with a thin smile
at Muratori’s sallow puzzled face. “But in-
form Commander Protopopov that I still ex-
pect hostile action. The men will remain at
battle stations. . Now the ship will move into
an orbital position, twenty kilometers out.”

Ann must have been listening for Anders’
step in the corridor, for she unlocked the cabin
door before he reached it, and stood waiting
for him with a tense little smile. She let him
in, and locked the door again.

"Tut, tut!” He grinned at her taut face.
“What will Protopopov think?”

“Please,” she begged anxiously. "I heard
the bells and whistles, and felt the guns go off.
I just want to know what’s going on. Were
you fighting von Falkenberg?”

Her dark hair was pleasantly disheveled.
Warm and eager, she stood so near that he
caught her slight perfume. Her slim tanned
body filled out the crushed blue silk with very
satisfactory curves. No, he couldn’t much
blame his fellow officers, for anything they sus-
pected.

“We fired at a Martian warship,” he told
her.

“But the Good-by Jane ?” He saw that her
brown trembling hands had clenched into anx-
ious fists. “Have you seen anything of Cap’n
Rob?”

101

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Anders stepped back from her. He sat
down in the chair that had been his, and put
his lighter carefully to another cigarette. He
had almost forgotten little McGee. Now he
remembered that the Martian warship had
attacked the Good-by Jane. Could that be
the reason that it had been drifting, dead?

His throat felt tight and dry again, and that
chilly prickle came back under his collar. Ann
O’Banion was still near and lovely, but now
he remembered that she was also still an
enemy.

“Not a glimpse, beautiful. But might be
McGee that took care of the Martian. It
was drifting, anyhow, and it failed to answer
our signals. One salvo knocked it into that
machine.”

He gave her a brown admiring grin.

“But you have my congratulations, for the
whole firm of Drake, McGee & Drake. I’ve
seen normal matter touch seetee before, but
never on quite that scale. Hadn’t ever real-
ized the nerve it must take, to run that seetee
lab.”

“Then Cap’n Rob was right?” Her gray
eyes turned eager. “That machine’s really see-
tee?”

“The silver end of it, anyhow.” He smashed
the cigarette in his own ash tray, and then
saw her hairpins in it. “Sorry, beautiful. I
can tell you more about that machine, a little
later. Because, just as soon as we get in posi-
tion, I’m going off to see what I can find.”

“Please,” she began urgently, “may I — ”

“Not this time,” he interrupted firmly. “Lis-
ten, precious, our friend Protopopov already
thinks I have you snared with an irresistible
fascination.” He grinned at her quick flush.
“Might misunderstand.”

“Please, Paul, let me come!”

He looked soberly at her breathless face.

“You weren’t looking, gorgeous,” he told
her solemnly. “You didn’t see just what hap-
pened to the Martian cruiser, when it touched
that machine.” It was hard to remember
that she was an enemy, and all the levity was
gone from his voice. “Mustn’t happen to
you.”

“Careful, Mr. Interplanet.” She mocked
his own brown grin. “And I can take care of
myself. You didn’t know that I put on Rick’s
gamma armor, while he was gone on a trip
to Pallasport, and went out from Freedonia
with old Jim Drake to help him cut that ham-
mer and anvil out of seetee meteors?”

Her gray eyes challenged him.

“Ever work any seetee yourself?”

Anders gulped. It appalled him, to think
of Ann’s fresh and vital loveliness exposed to
the danger of the frightful reaction that had
crushed and fused the armored cruiser like a
leaden toy. He made a feeble effort to answei-
her grin.

“Never did,” he admitted.

“Then I’m coming.” Her gray eyes were
triumphant. “Maybe I can keep you from
killing yourself. Anyhow, I’d feel a lot safer
helping you explore that machine, than I
would left alone here with your charming fel-
low officers.”

Anders stood up slowly. For a moment his
eyes were quizzical and grave. Then he bowed
toward the anxious girl, with a faintly sardonic
grin.

“You win, gorgeous,” he told her. “If you
want to help me get that bedplate for Inter-
planet, I have no right to object. You may
get into your armor. We’II leave the ship in
twenty minutes.”

He heard the quick little patch of her breath.
He thought she was going to speak, but she
didn’t. Tears made a bright sudden glitter
in her eyes. After a moment she gulped, and
turned quickly to unlock the door.

XI.

The tiny elevator dropped Anders to the
after control room.. Smaller than the bridge,
it was padded with the same gray sealing
plastic, crowded with duplicate instruments.
Commander Protopopov turned, with his
clumsy bearlike shamble, from the periscope
hood. His flat animal eyes held a bright mo-
ronic curiosity.

“I’m going off the ship, commander,” An-
ders told him. “You’ll take command until I
return. Hold a position twenty kilometers off
that object. Permit no other men off the ship.
I’m going alone, except for Miss O’Banion.”

“Aye, sir.” The huge exile made his blub-
bery chuckle. “So her pretty face is your
safe conduct into the Martian citadel? Ah,
captain, you’re clever with the women. I envy
your technique!”

Anders managed a bleak little grin.

“Enemy action is still very likely, com-
mander.” His voice rapped sharply. “What
sort of action, I don’t quite know. You will
take every precaution. Possibly thr* ship
may have been only a decoy, intended to lure
us into the range of some unfamiliar weapon.”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

102

His own suggestion sent a chilly tingle down
Anders’ spine. Something had happened to
the Martian’s crew. They must have been
dead or helpless or gone, before the Challenge
fired. He couldn’t guess what McGee might
have found and learned to use. This strange
derelict of an alien culture might carry weap-
ons completely unknown.

“Wait twenty-four hours, commander.” His
voice turned brittle again. “If in that time
we have not called or returned, you may con-
sider that we are lost. Don’t send a rescue
party. And don’t, under any circumstances,
approach that object nearer than twenty kil-
ometers.”

“Aye, sir,” the croaking whisper answered.

“If we don’t come back within twenty-four
hours,” Anders continued, “it will be your
duty to return to Pallasport at full accelera-
tion. Maintain photophone silence. Keep the
crew aboard when you land. You report to
Commissioner Hood, in person. Give him the
position and a full description of this object,
as you have observed it. And tell him that it
is what he sent me to find. You’ll remember
that, commander?”

“Aye, captain.” Protopopov made his
trained-animal salute, and his dark putty face
brightened with conclusions of his own. “And
Hood will order the Guard to attack it. That
will mean war. And war means promotion!”

His hollow chuckle bubbled.

“You can trust me, captain!”

“Sure.” Anders grinned. “But I intend to
come back.”

Ann O’Banion was waiting for him on the
valve deck, a still and clumsy-seeming figure in
the silvered bulk of her dirigible armor. Her
gray eyes smiled through her face plate, watch-
ing him climb and twist into his own.

He snapped equipment to his belt; a heavy,
lead-walled little spatial camera; fluorescent
pencil and paper; a spare plug-in head lamp,
more powerful than the adjustable photophone
lights; his spatial automatic. The telephone
rang. Muratori reported that the cruiser was
in position.

Anders hung up the telephone. With an
armored glove, he snapped his face plate shut.
Ann followed him into the air lock. The inner
valve clanged. Roaring economy pumps
sucked the air from about them — and all sound
with it, so they were left in a chasm of silence.
At last the massive outer valve swung open,
noiseless as a shadow. They swam out of the

ship, into diamond-sifted night.

Anders looked back.

For a moment the Challenge was huge be-
hind him. Its long guns were immense in sil-
houette, against the pale Galactic clouds.
Somehow, they gave him a shock of unreason-
able dread. He clutched unconsciously at his
futile pistol. But it was much too late,- he
told himself, to mistrust his fellow officers.

The great valve slammed silently behind
them, and the last glint of metal vanished.
The camouflaged cruiser was only a long black
shadow, across the glowing mist of stars. It
dwindled rapidly. When he looked back again,
he couldn’t find it.

The Sun struck against their backs, out of
the empty north. The black ocean of space
seemed about to drown its tiny disk. Its own
cold rays, Anders knew, took nearly an hour
on the way. It didn’t warm the insulated
armor. He knew that the temperature was
automatically right, but still something made
him shiver.

The red glow of Ann’s photophone light was
only a warm red star, a little nearer than the
rest, flying beside him. A wave of bleak lone-
liness made him glad that she had come, in
spite of all the risk.

He wanted to speak, just to feel the warmth
of her voice. But loneliness put a choking
constriction in his throat. The thing ahead
struck him with an impact of frightened won-
der. He couldn’t speak.

Against the stars, and the thin silver fog
of suns too remote for the human eye to sepa-
rate, the thing swiftly grew. The dome and
the rim and the mighty curving ribs struck
back the pale sunlight with a heatless glitter.
The five golden spikes were bright enigmas.
The rusted end was a red-black shadow,
against the crystal black of space.

Anders stared at the deep dark scar, still
faintly glowing with deadly radiations, where
the Martian cruiser had plowed up annihilat-
ing fire. Again he was lost in brooding puz-
zlement, about the fate of the Martian’s crew.
Franz von Falkenberg was clever, and he must
have known seetee. Yet something about this
machine must have destroyed the spy and all
his men.

“Paul?”

Ann’s tiny muffled voice startled him at first,
and then he was infinitely glad to hear it. He
turned his plunging suit to face the red flick-

103

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

ering point of her photophone light, inquiring
anxiously:

“What is it, Arm?”

“Nothing.” Her !~w troubled voice was
clear in his helmet, when the pickup cells faced
her. “Only I wanted to talk to you. That
thing makes me feel so terribly young and
small and lonely. I’m frightened, Paul — but
still glad you let me come. Please, you don’t
mind talking?”

"Not a bit, beautiful. Felt the same way.”

Her stiff silver sleeve pointed ahead.

“Queer, to think how old it is.” She spoke
in an awed, hushed whisper. “It has been
moving on this same orbit, just out fron the
Sun and back again, for twenty times the
length of human civilization. So long it makes
you shudder!”

Still it grew, and she made a little breath-
less sound.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTTON

104

“It’s so big — I had no idea!”

His engineer’s mind was busy, automati-
cally making estimates of the machine’s di-
mensions, from the angle it had subtended at
twenty kilometers.

“The long axis must be about six hundred
meters,” he told her. “Between those cylin-
ders — ports or valves, whatever they are. The
short axis would be something like three hun-
dred meters. Those needles are about that
long. Those ribs must be twenty meters thick.
The thing’s colossal!”

“Cap’n Rob, you know, said it had a mass
of eighty million tons.” Her voice was
troubled again. “What do you think became
of him, Paul?”

“Let’s go on around it,” he suggested cheer-
fully. “May find McGee on the other side,
safe aboard the Good-by Jane.”

Anders wasn’t sure, however, that he really
wanted to find that odd little asterite. The
back of his neck still prickled too easily, at
the memory of that dead, drifting ship. Mc-
Gee’s mathematical intuition had always
seemed uncanny, and now there was no telling
what he might have learned from this relic
of an alien science.

They circled the machine, now only a kil-
ometer away. They didn’t find the Good-by
Jane. But Ann caught her breath, with a soft
frightened gasp. Her armored sleeve pointed.
Anders saw another dark scar, deeply grooved
into the mirrorlike dome.

“That was the Jane!” The red undulating
glow brought her crushed whisper. “I see it,
now. Cap’n Rob tried to take shelter behind
the machine. But von Falkenberg found him,
and the guns battered him against it.”

“Might be, beautiful,” Anders cheerfully
agreed. "Or might have been just a terrene
meteor. Let’s go a little closer.”

The small red star of her helmet light swam
on beside him. He felt grateful for its pres-
ence, even if she had to be an enemy. She
spoke again, wonderingly:

“What makes half of it so bright, when the
rest looks so rusty and old?”

“Just wondering,” he said. “Time to fire
a shot.”

He moved a little ahead. Unsnapping the
light but powerful spatial automatic from his
belt, he aimed at the center of the rusty dome.
The little weapon jerked silently in his stiff
glove, and spat a thin yellow flame.

He watched for the bullet to strike, and
saw nothing. He fired again, at one of the

great rusted ribs, and then at the polar cylin-
der. Still nothing. But a fourth bullet, shot
against the silver edge of the rim, made a silent
blue explosion that blinded him.

“That’s it, beautiful!” he called softly.
“Maybe they didn’t know how to put that
plating on terrene metal. Or maybe the thing
got caught in a whiff of seetee gas, when the
planets collided. But anyhow it’s half ter-
rene, and half seetee!”

He put back the gun.

“And now, gorgeous, we’re going to find the
bedplate, for dear old Interplanet.” He
grinned through the oval leaded lens. “S’pose
that will be at the rim, where the two halves
come together?”

Ann didn’t say anything.

As they dropped together toward the rim,
Anders felt a nevv awed sense of the machine’s
colossal size. For that massive circling band
stood out a full twenty meters above the curve 1
of the unlike domes. It was double, really.
For the thin black line that seemed to sepa-
rate the rusted ring from the polished one,
was actually a space of more than half a
meter.

Anders tipped his flying suit, to drop feet-
first on the corroded ring. His gloved thumb
was on the peegee rheostat, ready to anchor
him down with a paragravity field. He was
peering into that space between the unlike'
rings, trying to see what held them apart. 1
But Ann flashed in front of him.

“Just a minute, reckless.” She mocked his,
own tone. “I thought you’d have a trick or
two to learn. You’ll find out you can’t take
anything for granted, not with seetee.”

Carefully poised, above the broad pitted
face of the rim, she unhooked a bit of thin wire
from her belt, and reached out to touch it.
Nothing happened.

“It’s all right,” she said.

Anders grinned, and they alighted on the
ring. The rust-eaten surface of it was like
a road, twenty meters wide, curving over the
top of a rounded metal hill. Anders moved
cautiously to the space that separated it from
the other, silver-colored ring.

“Those are the bedplates!” Ann cried
softly. “See — those disks!”

Then he saw that the narrow gap between
the two unlike rings was spaced with thou-
sands of thick disks. They had the same
bright polish as the seetee ring, and they were
fastened to it. But from the face of each

105

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

XII.

thrust a thick stem of rusty terrene metal,
welded to the terrene ring.

Leaning as close as he dared, Anders tried
to see the joining line, where the projecting
stem of the nearest unit came together with
the face of the disk. The joint was so close
he could see no space between.

That fact startled him, and he moved back
suddenly. The terrene stem was in visible con-
tact with the seetee disk. He knew it must
have been there for many thousand years.
Yet he couldn’t resist a feeling that they ought
to erupt into annihilating flame.

“Look!” Ann’s - voice was breathless.
“There’s where Cap’n Rob cut out the bed-
plate he was going to bring us — before von
Falkenberg caught him.”

Anders followed her along the terrene rim.
She pointed, and he saw where the silvered
seetee guard flange had been cut away, to make
room for a man to slip down between the rings.

He thought it must have been a precarious
feat, but one of the units had been removed.
Three thick seetee straps, which anchored the
meter-wide disk, had been burned in two. The
heavy terrene stem had obviously been cut
with an oxy hydrogen torch.

Anders backed cautiously away from his
examination of that evidence, to find Ann look-
ing at him. Beyond the heavy lens, he thought
her gray eyes were quizzical. Her helmet
light quivered with transmitted speech.

“Well, genius!” Her voice was softly mock-
ing. “You’ve found the bedplate, for dear
old Interplanet. So what are you going to do
with it now?”

“Don’t quite know,” he told her gravely.
“S’pose the only way is to take one of them
apart, to see just what keeps it from blowing
up. But that strikes me as a somewhat tick-
lish job.”

“It would be.” She nodded gravely, beyond
the lens. “There must be some terrific ten-
sion, holding the surfaces from real contact.
If you happened to release it, the thing would
probably explode like a shipload of tritonite.”

“ ’Magine so, beautiful. What would you
suggest?”

“I’m not working for Interplanet,” she told
him sweetly. “It’s all your problem, smart-
and-handsome.”

“And I intend to solve it,” he assured her
curtly. “That cylinder looks like a valve, to
me. The answer may be waiting, right inside.
Coming, Miss O’Banion?”

Their dirigible suits lifted away from that
broad ring of rusted metal. Anders saw that
the red warm star of Ann’s helmet light was
flying very close beside him. Her low voice
reached him:

“I’m coming, Paul. And I don’t mind,
really, if you want to call me beautiful.”

He laughed, with the sudden release of nerv-
ous tension. Impulsively, he reached out and
caught the glove of her flying armor. She
clung to his hand, as they soared over the im-
mense curve of the rusted dome.

“Thanks.” He grinned through the leaded
glass. “And glad you’re with me, beautiful.
This thing’s so strange and old, it makes you
feel uncomfortable. Feeling it’s almost
haunted, by the ghosts of the things that built
it. Beside them, you’re a very friendly
enemy.”

They came over the dome, back in sight
of the point where they had left the Challenge.
He couldn’t help searching the star clouds of
Andromeda, hoping to see its shadow. But
of course it was much too far away.

They dropped toward the polar cylinder.

“Better let me go ahead,” he urged her.
“Something happened to those Martians — we
don’t know what. And if — ” He paused a lit-
tle, grinning. “Well, gorgeous, just be sure
you’re back on the Challenge in plenty of
time. Y’see, Protopopov has orders to leave
us, if we aren’t back in twenty-four hours.”

Her glove clung tightly to his armored hand
for a moment, and then she let it go. Once
more she swam ahead of him, to test the rim
of the cylinder with the thin wire. It didn’t
react, and they alighted upon it.

“Odd!” Anders whispered. “Y’notice you
don’t need your own peegee unit, to hold you
down. This thing’s got a field of its own.
Still active, after eighty thousand years. The
Invaders must have conquered the field-loss
problem, that we’ve been fighting ever since
Maxim-Gore discovered paragravity.”

The thin, heatless rays of the far-off Sun
still found them, on the lip of the hollow cyl-
inder. L at the inside, lit only by the stars,
was a chasm of black mystery. They turned
up their helmet lights for illumination, and
Anders plugged in the extra head lamp he
had brought. But still the pale uneasy beams
seemed too feeble to dispel the frozen, age-
clotted shadows that filled the cylinder.

Ann stood on the broad rusty lip, staring

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

106

down the rosy searching beam from her hel-
met. Her smallness, even in the bulging ar-
mor, gave Anders a new sense of the machine’s
immense size. The black opening, he thought,
must be fifty meters aeross.

As his eyes became accustomed to the
fainter light, he made out huge flaps and
hinges of rusty metal, down inside the lip. It
was oddly difficult for him to puzzle out the
way they worked — and he realized, with a
chilly discomfort, that the very thought-
patterns of their designers must have been
completely alien. But after a moment he saw
that they were the parts of an immense valve,
which had closed the top of the cylinder. The
valve was half open, now.

He moved toward it.

“Wait, Paul!” He could tell from Ann’s
strained voice that she was trying not to shud-
der. “Do you think we’d better go on?”
Then she must have seen that he didn’t mean
to stop. “Wait for me!”

She leaped after him, off the rim. Slowly,
resisting the pull of that strange paragravity
field with the power of their armor, they
floated down between the half-opened leaves
of that tremendous valve.

The inside of the cylinder was a black enor-
mous cavern. At first their feeble probing
lights found nothing but further darkness.
Slowly, however, Anders’ searching eyes be-
came adjusted.

A long spiral footway ran around and
around the vast curve of the wall, slanting
downward. At intervals there were level plat-
forms, with black doorways beyond them. The
dim floor of the pit was a full hundred meters
beneath.

“A berth!” he whispered suddenly. “This
pit is just a berth for a spaceship— and it’s
big enough to hold the Challenge a dozen
times!”

He swam toward the nearest platform.

“These must have come level with the
valves.” His voice was quick, excited. “And
the thing — the Invaders — went up and down
that narrow walk.” He remembered that
other spiral way, in von Palkenberg’s film of
the broken golden needle, and tried to picture
this berth as it must have been in use.

“I wonder what they were?” His voice
slowed and fell again, to a burden of ancient
mystery. “Seems they preferred a sloping
ramp, to steps. Some of these doorways look

too tall and too narrow, for men. And that
handrail is too high — ”

“Don’t, Paul!”

Unthinkingly, he had reached out to that
bright railing above the spiral ramp, where
those other thin"' 0 walked. Ann checked
him, with that stoti-^ry of warning, and the
;shoulder of her darting armor brushed him
away.

“Eh!” he gasped. “What — ”

Then his startled voice dried up. For he
saw the bright silver-colored disks of the bed-
plates, like geometric mushrooms on long
rusty stems, that supported the curving foot-
way. He saw that it didn’t touch the walls,
and noticed the inside guard rails.

“Thanks, beautiful!” It was a husky whis-
per. He watched her touch the tip of her fine
wire to the railing he had almost grasped. It
made a tiny sun of white atomic flame. “Stu-
pid of me. Of course they had to use seetee
walks and rails, even here.”

They swam back from the deadly ramp.

“I wonder what this thing was for?” Ann
whispered.

“Dunno, darlin’.” His voice was shaken,
still. “Far too big for a ship. Besides, it
couldn’t land in any atmosphere — because one
half or the other would react. Must have been
assembled out at space.” He made a puz-
zled shrug, in the armor. “May find out, in-
side.”

They dropped, toward the distant floor.

He waited, this time, for Ann to test it with
her wire. It didn’t react. They came down
upon it. In the center was a massive cradle,
which must have carried the weight of that
vanished ship in its berth. About the cradle
were six holes, some four meters wide, yawning
black and somehow ominous in the floor.

Ring-shaped heaps of crushed rock sur-
rounded the holes. Anders stooped clumsily
to scoop up an armored gloveful of pebbles,
and peered at them under his head lamp.

“Ore!” he exclaimed. “Mostly meteoric
nickel-iron.”

He looked up again, with new understand-
ing, at the winding ramp and the platforms
and the giant valve half open to the stars —
and it gave him a curious brief sense of relief
to recognize red Antares in the jeweled curve
of the Scorpion.

“Ore?” questioned Ann.

“These openings are ore chutes,” he told her.
“The Invaders must have had a terrene ore
ship with a seetee bridge, or maybe equipped

107 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

with remote control. Anyhow, seems they col-
lected terrene ore — meteor drift, and such —
and dumped it through these chutes.”

He was peering through the nearest black
opening, and his voice turned triumphant.

“Must have had mills and furnaces and ter-
rene machine shops down below. This thing’s
going to make a pretty prize for Interplanet,
beautiful! Just the blueprints for it would be
worth more billions th-— ”

Ann screamed.

She uttered no ladylike squeal or yelp, but
a deep-lunged shriek, which carried terror at
high tension. Anders groped for his auto-
matic and lunged to her side. Then he saw
that she was standing still, merely pointing.

“Wh — ” he stammered. “What is it?”

“Sorry.” She made a nervous little laugh.
“I’m all right. Only a little jumpy. I didn’t
mean to scare you. But — ” Her voice turned
husky, and he heard her gulp. “But yonder
is a dead man.”

The searching beam of Anders’ head lamp
found the dim figure, where she pointed. It
was near the mighty curve of the wall. The
dead man wore bulky space armor, black-
painted. He sat on the floor, with steel-clad
legs spread wide apart. His arms were closed
fast around a massive iron bar, holding it up-
right. At the top of the bar, just above his
dead helmet light, was the thick polished disk
of a seetee bedplate.

The sight was grotesque. Anders thought
the dead man resembled some clumsy toy,
embracing the stem of a queer metal mush-
room. He choked back a shocked, mirthless
laugh.

The man in the black armor was really dead.
His rigid, unnatural posture made that cer-
tain. With the slow escape of body heat from
the suit, his flesh was probably already frozen
nearly as hard as the iron stalk he supported.

“It isn’t Cap’n Rob.” Ann’s whisper had a
shaky relief. “But who could it be? And
why was he just sitting there, holding that
thing in his arms?”

“S’pose he’s one of the men from the Mar-
tian,” Anders said.' “Might be von Falken-
berg, himself. He wanted one of those bed-
plates for a model, like your friend McGee.
Prob’ly intended to carry it out to his ship.
Maybe weld it to the hull— ’course he couldn’t
take it inside.”

Their lights probed upward.

“There’s where he got it,” Ann whispered

suddenly. “He cut it out from under that
ramp ” From the quiver of her breathless
voicej ' knew she shuddered. “But what
killed hi, ?”

“Prob’ly ran a. hand cutting torch off his
own battery pack,” Anders suggested. “Used
more juice than he thought. The bedplate
has a couple of tons of mass, with that long
stem. Maybe he forgot this permanent field.
Anyhow, when he got the thing cut loose, he
didn’t have power left to lift it.”

Ann’s voice shivered. “And he couldn’t put
it down!”

“Not without blowing himself through the
roof.” Anders stared at the figure in black.
“The ramp was too high to lean it on, and he
couldn’t let the seetee part touch the floor.
He just had to sit and hold it balanced on the
stem, till his batteries gave out and his air
unit quit. Waiting, maybe for his friends to
come back. Only they didn’t come.”

Ann turned away quickly.

“A ghastly way to die!” she whispered.
“Even for Franz von Falkenberg!”

Anders was bending closer, with his head
lamp on that frozen seated figure.

“But it wasn’t von Falkenberg!” His voice
was startled, puzzled. “Anyhow, this isn’t
Martian armor. Jovian. For here’s the mark,
in Russian, of the Vladimir Rich Ulianov Ar-
senal, on Europa. Don’t quite understand—
unless Soviet agents were after von Falken-
berg, too.”

“If the Jovians came, they’re dead!” Ann’s
voice was high, breathless, close to hysteria.
“They’re all dead, now. Just like von Falken-
berg, and dear old Cap’n Rob. Because this
whole dreadful thing has been dead for eighty
thousand years, and there’s nothing here but
death.”

She caught his stiff glove, urgently.

“Please, Paul,” she begged him, “can’t we
go back now, and get the Drakes? They know
seetee. I think they could take one of those
bedplates apart without getting killed. And
that would be enough. There’s nothing else
we need.”

He was silent, merely staring at the gro-
tesque black thing sitting on the floor, sup-
porting the rusted stem of that tall silver
mushroom. She tugged at his glove, anxiously.

“Please,” she urged softly, “let’s get out
while we can. This whole terrible machine is
too strange, too different. We don’t know
what it was for, or how it works. Anything

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

108

we touch is likely to be deadly — like that
railing. So, please!”

Anders turned away from the thing in black,
to Ann. His helmet light fell through her
face plate, so that he could see the brown
curve of her cheek, and her freckled nose, and
the frightened dark of her dilated, imploring
eyes.

“Maybe you’ve got something, gorgeous.”
His voice was grave and slow. “The thing
makes me feel just the same way. I’m not
quite sure we need anything out of it. Might
be a stroke of luck for the human race, if the
damned thing blew itself to neutrons.”

His eyes left her taut brown face. They
followed the thin white beam of his head lamp,
tracing that winding footway up and up into
the thickening dark. The builders of it had
used no steps, and the silver-colored railing
seemed too high for men.

He lost the ramp in the blackness above, and
his eyes hurried back to Ann. It was good to
see the warm human curves of her brown
cheek and forehead, and even the freckles on
her nose. He squeezed her clutching glove.

“Don’t know what they were,” he told her
slowly. “Seems they must have been different
in quite a lot of ways. Science and culture
must have been totally strange. Hard to say
what an injection of their dead culture would
do to ours.”

She watched him, anxious and silent.

“Dunno.” He shrugged, in the bulky ar-
mor. “No social philosopher, gorgeous. Don’t
even know how to approach the question, ex-
cept in engineering terms. But I do know
that when you put together unlike things or
forces, you’re apt to get a reaction.”

Her intent face seemed puzzled.

“Constructive, sometimes,” he continued
softly! “Sometimes destructive. Sometimes

109

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

neither. Unlike poles attract. A light metal
and a poison gas give you common salt, with
a good deal of heat and violence. Paragravity
plus the old corporation laws made Inter-
planet. Men in high space make spatial en-
gineers. One terrene ship plus one seetee
meteor equals one blinding flash. So what will
you get when you add the Invaders’ science to-
our civilization?”

“I don’t know, Paul.”

Ann’s hand was tense in his, and he felt
her shiver. Her silvered armor drew closer to
him. He saw her frightened eyes flash un-
easily toward the man in black sitting with
the fatal metal mushroom in his arms.

“But you will come?” she begged. “Let’s
get away!”

“ ’Fraid not, gorgeous.” He shrugged again.
"Don’t mind my speculations. I’m just an
engineer, and I’ve got a job to do. Don’t
know about the consequences, but they’re out-
side my field.”

He looked at the luminous watch on his
sleeve.

“Let’s try the ore bins, next. Bound to be
terrene. Want to find out what they did with
this machine. And we still have the most of
our twenty-four hours. Want to come along?”

“Please — ” She choked off her breathless
protest, when she saw that he was moving.
“I’m coming, Paul.”

She followed him away from the man in
black, to the lip of the nearest dark opening.
He was stooping over it, peering down into
the chasm beneath the floor. Dimly, far be-
neath, he could see the gray pile of ore, heaped
against vast dark walls.

“On we go, beautiful,” he said cheerfully.
“For dear old Interplanet — ”

Stepping over the rim, he heard the dry
little sound in her throat, as if she had tried
to scream and couldn’t. He felt the quick
snatch of her hand, at the neck strap of his
armor. The thrust of her suit hauled him
back.

“Now listen, gorgeous.” He grinned at her.
“If you can’t take it, you’ll just have to go
back and wait with Protopopov — ”

Still she couldn’t speak, but he followed her
pointing sleeve. He saw where his foot had
started a little heap of broken rock to running
in a thin stream down the chute. But what
was strange about that?

“Don’t you see?” Her voice came at last,
dry and frightened. “Don’t you see what hap-
pens to the pebbles?”

XIII.

For a moment he stared blankly. Then at
last he saw that each little falling rock, when
it had dropped a certain short distance below
the floor, began to crumble and dissolve. Hard
nuggets of metoric iron fell into fine gray dust.

Anders suddenly wanted to sit down. His
skin felt clammy, and he thought he was going
to be sick. He pressed down with his chin,
to open the receiver in the front of his helmet
intended for such emergencies. But the nau-
sea passed, and he tried to grin at Ann.

"It didn’t touch you?” she whispered.

He shook his head, in the big helmet. His
throat was too tight and dry to let him speak.
He kicked weakly, to start another little slide
of rock fragments into that black pit. With
a sick fascination, he watched them break into
impalpable dust.

“Clever gadget,” he gulped at last. “Used
to hope I could hit on something like it, for
our peegee refineries. S’pose it’s just some sort
of field that temporarily breaks molecular
bonds. Stuff just falls to individual atoms!”

“Please,” Ann whispered shakily. “Now
won’t you come back to the ship?”

“Embarrass me.” He made a hollow little
laugh. “Saving my life every fifteen minutes.
But Interplanet is going to need this little
gadget, y’know, nearly as much as that bed-
plate. Handy for mining, and drilling terra-
former shafts, as well as milling ore. Billions
in it — every shareholder can keep another mis-
tress and grow another chin.” He managed
to grin. “Thanks again, gorgeous, but I can’t
stop now.”

“Oh, Paul, I ... I hate you! Damn Inter-
planet!”

Then she was silent behind him, as he moved
away. He looked back. In the clumsy armor,
she looked very small and lonely in that huge
dark pit. Suddenly he wanted very much to
go back to her. But she was still the enemy.

“Sorry, beautiful,” he called. “Maybe you
shouldn’t keep saving me.”

She made an angry little gasp, and followed
him.

He lifted off the floor, toward a broad pro-
jecting platform twenty meters above. It was
built against the rusty wall, and he saw no
bright bedplates under it. He knew it must
be terrene. But Ann swam silently ahead,
and he waited for her to test it with the wire.

“Safe,” she said stiffly.

They dropped on the end of it. The bright-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

110

railed seetee footway sloped close above, sup-
ported on dark-stemmed silver mushrooms.
There was a little landing, where the Invaders
must have stood to watch their terrene ma-
chines on this platform. The landing seemed
too narrow for human comfort, and the rail-
ing looked too high for men.

“A terrene dock.” Anders flashed his head
lamp about the long rusty platform. “They
must have used it to load terrene machinery
and supplies into the ore ship.”

His searching light found a broad black
doorway yawning in the rusty wall behind it.
Two narrow railways were laid out through
the doorway, across the platform. The rails
ended sharply, and he thought they must have
joined others on the vanished ship. His light
found the black shape of a small rail car, and
he moved quickly toward it.

“Now we’re finding things!” he called cheer-
fully to Ann. “Must have had their terrene
repair shops and warehouses, for the ship,
somewhere beyond that door. All we’ve got
to do is follow the tracks.”

“Stop!” she whispered suddenly. “I can’t
scream any more.”

But he had already halted. At the side of
the rusty little car, something made a queer
black heap on the dock. That something had
been a man in dirigible armor. Both legs were
sliced cleanly off, close to the body. The blood
had dried, in the vacuum of space, to a thin
brown stain spattered on the tracks.

Anders went up to it, gingerly, in spite of
Ann’s sharp cry of protest. He found the lit-
tle silver plate on the breast of the black cam-
ouflaged armor. It, too, had been manufac-
tured at the Vladimir Ilich Ulianov Arsenal.

He turned cautiously to the car. Its low
metal bed carried a bulky machine. A number
of round shafts projected through the top of
the rectangular metal case. They had triangu-
lar heads, as if shaped to be turned with a
special tool. Sunk in the end of it toward
the dead man he saw two hollow copper-
colored cups, each with a tiny diamond point
projecting from the bottom.

“Must be some sort of mining machine,” he
decided at last. “Prob’ly used that bond-
breaking field, projected to make a cutting
blade. Must have made it to slice up meteors
too big to handle. Our Jovian friend didn’t
know it was loaded.”

Ann looked uneasily at her watch.

“Now, Paul,” she whispered hopefully,
“can’t we go?”

He had started around the end of the little
car. Her voice turned him back, in front of
the dark yawning doorway. Behind the oval
lens, his light found Ann’s taut protesting face.

“I’m going on,” he told her. “Hood will
want more notes and pictures. Still got to find
out what the whole damned thing was built
for. Better wait for me, beautiful. I’ll try
to be careful — but don’t you forget the time.”

He was about to go on, but her anxious
face held his glance. The stray wisp of dark
hair across her brown forehead made her look
like a lost, frightened child. She seemed tired,
and hurt, and desperately afraid. He saw
quick tears start into her gray eyes. He ex-
pected some hysterical outburst. But she only
made a bleak little nod, and started to follow
him.

Then something moved.

The chance sweep of Anders’ head lamp
caught the movement. It was on another pro-
jecting platform, far across the great pit, and
far above them. The beam was too faint,
at that distance, to show any details. And the
moving thing dropped quickly out of sight.

Anders was frozen. A tingling paralysis
seized him. Sudden sweat chilled him. For
a moment he couldn’t move, or speak, or even
breathe. Because the moving thing was one
of the Invaders.

That was his first shocking apprehension.
His fevered imagination tried to turn the fur-
tive shadow he had glimpsed, into something
that used a sloping ramp instead of steps,
something that could reach a handrail far too
high for a man.

“Ann!” He got back his breath, and whis-
pered to her. She hadn’t seen it. She didn’t
understand, but now that icy paralysis was
broken. He caught her glove and pulled her
flat on the rusty platform, close to the little
car.

“What is it?” she gasped.

“Thought it was one of the Invaders.” He
made a weak little laugh, at his own alarm.
“Stupid of me, because it’s hiding on that ter-
rene dock. Gave me quite a jolt. S’pose it’s
just a man.”

Perhaps, he thought fleetingly, there was
little reason for his belief. Such men as Franz
von Falkenberg were deadly as anything he
knew. But he was used to dealing with men,
and he couldn’t even imagine anything to fit
the doors and ramps and railings that the In-
vaders must have used.

Ill

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“Cut oft your light,” he whispered.

He snapped oft his own, and rose cautiously.
It gave him a cold, lonely unease to be thus
cut oft from Ann. He was glad to feel her
glove touch his armored sleeve. For a mo-
ment the pit seemed utterly dark, save for the
stars beyond the valve. Then another red
point came out, nearer, trembling with trans-
mitted speech.

“Ann?” The voice was a gentle drawl.
“Ann O’Banion?”

Her own helmet light flashed on again.

“Cap’n Rob?” she cried breathlessly. “It’s
really you?”

She lifted away from the platform. Anders
snapped on his own head lamp, and soared
after her. She dropped to that higher dock,
where Rob McGee was waiting. Stubby in
his silvered armor, the little spaceman seemed
hardly as tall as Ann. He waddled nimbly
to meet her, and reached out his gloves.
Through his thick lens, Anders had a glimpse
of his square leathery face,., his squinted eyes
bright with tears of joy.

This platform, Anders saw, was like the one
they had left. The spiral footway slanted over
it, with another oddly narrow landing from
which the tall Invaders must have watched
the terrene machines they had built but must
not touch. Two narrow rusty railways ran
back across the platform, through a broad
doorway into the dark. *

Anders dropped watchfully to the other end
of the dock, beyond the little railways. He
saw that McGee wore an antique space pistol,
snapped to his belt. Anders leveled his own
spatial automatic.

“H’lo, McGee,” he said curtly. “Keep your
hands where they are. Let me take your
gun.”

The little spaceman didn’t move.

“Paul, what do you mean?” Ann protested
sharply.

“Arresting McGee.” His voice was clipped
and flat. “Precautionary measure. Y’see, the
circumstantial evidence looks a little queer.
Dead men everywhere, and that Martian dere-
lict. Have to take the gun.”

Alertly, he started walking forward. . The
stiff armor made walking laborious, but he
liked a solid footing in emergencies. McGee
watched silently, until he came to the narrow
railways across the platform.

“Wait, captain.” The gentle drawling voice
was almost apologetic. “Better not touch
those rails.”

Anders jerked back his descending foot.
“What’s the matter with them?”

“Charged,” McGee said softly. “Power for
the cars. You see, the Invaders never touched
them anyhow, so they didn’t have to shield
them. Two of the Jovians died that way.”
Anders peered through the lens, at his
seamed square face.

“Sorry, McGee,” he said skeptically. “Bet-
ter think of something else. ’Cause I don’t
fall for that one. Isn’t feasible to carry cur-
rent on a bare rail, in this vacuum. Y’need
air for insulation. Too much loss.”

“Not for the Invaders,” McGee protested
quietly. “You see, captain, they were experts
at power transmission. They have power
equipment, down inside, that’s a thousand
years ahead of us.”

The Earthman stepped back, with a shaken
laugh. His foot had almost touched that
harmless-looking rail, and he remembered that
he had been about to walk the tracks through
the doorway from the other platform, before
McGee appeared.

“Thanks, McGee.” His voice came husky
and weak. “I’ll remember that. But still I’ll
have to keep you under arrest, till I find what
all has happened here.” His voice turned
hard again. “Ann, will you bring me his gun?”
Silently, she unsnapped the ancient little
weapon from McGee’s belt, and soared over
the little railways to hand it to Anders, and
silently returned to stand by McGee. The
stubby little spaceman merely stood there,
waiting.

“Well, McGee?” Anders rapped impatiently.
“Got anything to say?”

“Not to you, captain,” McGee said gently.
“But he didn’t kill anybody!” Ann’s brown
face was taut, behind the oval lens, and her
voice flared out angrily. “Not unless it was
in self-defense. Did you, Cap’n Rob?”

“Not even in self-defense,” drawled McGee.
“They were all hunting me, but I didn’t have
to kill them. Because you see, captain, in one
way or another they all killed themselves.”
“P’raps.” Anders was doubtful. “But
what do you claim you’ve been up to, McGee,
skulking about in the dark with a gun?”

Beyond his lens, McGee’s seamed leathery
face was stubbornly set. Seeing that he didn’t
mean to answer, Anders moved a little for-
ward, stopping short of the deadly railways.

"Listen, McGee.” He tried to be persuasive.
“I don’t intend to be unjust. It’s only nay

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

112

duty, as an officer of the High Space Guard,
to investigate the death of these men. If you
can satisfy me that you’re free of any criminal
responsibility, I’ll release you. ’Specially since
you spoke about the railways.”

“Better tell him, Cap’n Rob,” Ann advised
quietly.

McGee stared at Anders for long seconds,
silently.

“You see, captain,” he began at last, “they
followed me here from Pallasport. Their ship
looked like a Martian. I thought it was von
Falkenberg, because he had robbed us before.
But I was mistaken.”

‘Then who was it?” Anders demanded.

“Jovians.” McGee’s voice was very delib-
erate and gentle. “Spies and engineers from
the Jovian Soviet, who had been sent to the
Mandate to join the battle for seetee. Their
cruiser was disguised — to keep their govern-
ment out of trouble for breaking the treaty, if
they were sighted. It had flat, Martian-type
turrets.”

“Eh!” Anders nodded quickly, in the hel-
met. “So it wasn’t von Falkenberg at all?
That accounts for the made-on-Europa armor.
But go ahead, McGee.”

“I had been here twenty-one hours, when
they came,” the little spaceman went on softly.
“I had already cut loose a seetee bedplate and
attached it to the hull of the Jane, to carry
it back to the Drakes on Freedonia. The Jo-
vians hailed me in German, and began firing
when I wouldn’t surrender.”

“We heard your call to Freedonia,” An-
ders told him. “But what happened to your
ship?”

“The little Jane wasn’t armed or camou-
flaged,” McGee said sadly. “We couldn’t
fight, and we couldn’t get away. We just hid
behind the machine. That gave me time to
make that call — they had fired from four hun-
dred kilometers.”

His squinted eyes peered solemnly through
the lens.

“Then I had to leave the Jane,” his soft
drawl continued. “You see, I had welded the
stem of that bedplate to the hull. I knew
what would happen, if they hit it. I just had
time to get inside this valve, before they made
a hit. The bedplate went off like a thousand
tons of tritonite. There was nothing left.”

“Oh!” Ann made a hurt little gasp. “The
poor little Jane!”

“I was sorry to lose her,” said McGee.
“We’d had her so long, she seemed almost alive.

Never was a stancher little ship.”

Anders peered at him, wonderingly.

“You mean you’ve been five days in that
armor?”

McGee shrugged a tight roll of silvered fab-
ric strapped above the battery pack on his
armored shoulders.

“I brought an air balloon,” he said gently.
“I inflate that, when I have to eat or sleep.
I had a few bars of space rations, and the air
unit condenses water enough. I took fresh
batteries off a dead Jovian.”

“But you’ve been marooned, in this dread-
ful place?” Ann’s voice had a thin edge of
horror. “With all those men trying to hunt
you down?”

McGee nodded calmly.

“They saw me come in through the valve,”
he said. “They were trying to kill me, to keep
the secret of the machine for the Jovian So-
viet. But, you see, they didn’t really under-
stand it. That’s why it killed them.”

“Killed them?” Anders echoed sharply.
“How?”

“One way and another,” repeated McGee.
“You saw the one holding the bedplate, and
the one with his legs cut off — they were al-
ready dead when I found them. Two stepped
on the power rails. Several must have gone
down the ore chutes, and I saw one trip him-
self into an automatic furnace. But the most
of them died down about the power generator.
Because, when you don’t understand, that’s
the most dangerous part of all.”

“But you understand?”

McGee’s square jaw set stubbornly again.
“See here, McGee.” Anders took a persua-
sive tone. “Y’know I represent Interplanet.
My orders are to get seetee for my employers.
I intend to be just. But, naturally, I’m going
to take possession of this machine, for the
Interplanet.”

McGee didn’t speak, but Ann flared back:
“Do you call that justice?”

“It’s my duty,” Anders said. “But I have
full authority, and I can promise that Inter-
planet will be generous. I admit you have a
valid claim, McGee, as first discoverer. You
can set your own price on that, and I’ll see
you’re paid.”

McGee merely shook his head.

“Seems you know quite a lot about this
machine.” Anders peered keenly into his un-
yielding face. “Maybe you know what it was
built for? Maybe you’ve found out how those

113

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

bedplates work? I’ll give you a contract, if
you can tell me that.”

McGee said quietly, “I’m not working for
Interplanet.”

“Then I’ll talk to Karen Hood, when we get
back to Pallasport,” Anders told him. “She’s
got a business head, and I think she’ll admit
that Interplanet holds the aces. Understand.
I don’t mean to rob you. I’m just going to
make the whole firm of Drake, McGee & Drake
into billionaires — whether you like it or not.”

He grinned at Ann’s wrathful face.

“Now I think it’s time to go.” He touched
his gun. “Come along, McGee.”

Ann lifted toward the mighty valve.

“Come, Cap’n Rob.” Her voice was re-
lieved. “Let’s get out of this dreadful place.”

McGee hung back stubbornly, until Anders
gestured with the gun. He lurched unwill-
ingly off the platform. Watchfully, Anders
followed him up through the valve. They
paused on the lip of that immense cylinder.

The Earthman was glad to see the shining
mist of stars again, changeless on the crystal
black of space. He heard Ann draw a long
breath, as if they had come out into fresh
air from some musty dungeon.

“The Challenge is waiting, twenty kilome-
ters off,” he told them. “They’re blacked out,
and that’s too far to see them. I’ll call Com-
mander Protopopov to show us a light — ”

His voice dried up.

For little Rob McGee had pointed silently
and he saw the blacked-out cruiser. The cam-

ouflaged hull made a sharp silhouette against
the glowing Galactic clouds of Sagittarius. He
stared incredulously, but the trim lines of hull
and rounded turrets, the four long guns,
couldn’t be mistaken.

“That fool Protopopov!” His voice was
brittle with anger. “Not a kilometer off!
When I expressly ordered him to keep a safe
distance. Worried about us, I s’pose — and
even sent a search party!”

For he saw the tiny shadow of a man in
armor, flying swiftly across that mist of dis-
tant suns toward the cruiser’s valves. He
turned up his helmet photophone, and nar-
rowed its beam, to reach the vessel.

“Challenge ahoy!” The red ray trembled
with his impatient voice. “This is Captain An-
ders, returning. Show us a light, and ready
the valves. . . . Challenge ahoy! . . . Challenge
ahoy!”

But the black ship showed no light, Anders
began to wonder uneasily if he had really seen
that fleeting figure, returning to the valves.
He wondered if the proud Challenge could be
already another derelict, a second vessel sucked
of life by this ancient dead machine.

He gripped, his automatic harder, and
glanced sharply aside at Rob McGee. For it
struck him suddenly that the odd little space-
man had seemed curiously indifferent about
departing, for a rescued maroon, and it was
pretty clear that he knew much more than
he had told.

Anxiously he called again, " Challenge ahoy!”

And now the Challenge answered. The
ship’s powerful photophone transmitter glared
like an angry red eye from the pointed bow,
trembling with the vibrations of Protopopov’s
croaking whisper:

“What do you want?”

“This is Captain Anders.” He tried not
to sound too curt. “Show us a light and ready
the valves. We’re returning aboard.”

For a moment the red eye was still.

“Unfortunately, you’re mistaken,” came the
hoarse reply. “Because very regrettable exi-
gencies make it impossible for us to obey your
orders any further. Captain Anders. My fel-
low officers join me in offering our deepest
apologies. But you can’t return to the ship.”

"You — ” Anders choked. “This is mutiny,
treason!”

“Exactly, captain,” came the hollow rasping
croak. “We shall inform your superior offi-
cers that you lost your head over an asterite
girl spy, and attempted to betray the Chat-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

114

lenge to a ring of Free Space revolutionists.”

The husky moronic whisper brightened with
invention.

“I shall report to Commissioner Hood that
you were aiding them by stealing military in-
formation from the confidential files of Inter-
planet. I shall add the warning that the Free
Space Party is plotting to attack the Man-
date, with seetee weapons manufactured on
Freedonia.”

“Commander, you can’t get away with
that!” Anders protested desperately. “Are you
crazy? Listen to reason, man — you’ll be shot
for this. Let me talk to Muratori. Give me
Omura!”

The red glaring eye didn’t answer.

“Think what you’re doing, Protopopov — ”

“So that’s the name he uses?” little Rob
McGee interrupted calmly. “I’ve met that
man before, Captain Anders, and I know that
undertaker’s whisper. He’s got another name,
besides Protopopov. That’s Franz von Falken-
berg!”

Back from the drifting ship, the red beam
brought a bubbling chuckle. For the ship’s
delicate receiver must have picked up McGee’s
inteiTuption.

“And what do you think of that, my so-
- clever captain?” The croaking whisper turned
sardonic. “Now you may as well know that
Muratori and Omura are also friends of Mars.
The most of your brave crew have already
sworn the oath of allegiance to the Reich —
and the witless few who refused are dead.”

The red light shuddered again, to that hol-
low chuckle.

“Aren’t you even clever enough,” inquired
that triumphant whisper, “to see the trend of
history? Can’t you see, my brilliant captain,
that the rich old empire of Interplanet is fall-
ing to ruin of its own dead weight? Don’t
you see that the Mandate is only a feeble
prop? Can’t you perceive that the time is ripe
for a new interstellar empire, to be conquered
with seetee?”

That strange laugh bubbled again.

“Farewell, my clever captain,” the red beam
croaked. “We must leave you now, to reflect
upon the cycles of empire.”

The burning eye winked out.

“Moment, commander.” The Earthman’s
voice turned brittle again. “If the Martian
Reich means to conquer with seetee, you’re
just about six months late. Because the spa-
tial engineering firm of Drake, McGee & Drake

already has a successful seetee hammer in op-
eration on Freedonia — that they built for In-
terplanet.”

Ann made a stifled cry of hurt protest.

“Thanks,” the red beam whispered back.
“But we’ll take care of that.”

The burning eye went out again, and An-
ders saw the long spatial rifles of the Challenge
swinging swiftly down against the white mist
of stars. He snatched desperately for the neck
straps of Ann and little McGee, and hauled
them down through the open valve.

At this close range, he knew, the shells would
be only a fractional second on the way. He
tried to push Ann and McGee ahead of him,
for this stupid blunder had been no fault of
theirs. Then the universe flamed red. The
shells made no sound, but something tugged
very gently at his helmet.

XIV.

The next thing that Anders distinctly knew,
he was lying on his back on the upper terrene
platform, inside that dark enormous cylinder.
His neck felt stiff, and he didn’t want to move
his head. He felt dull throbbling all through
his head, not quite pain.

He thought he was alone.

Without moving his head, he could see a
broad window of open space, its crystal black-
ness splendid with the Galactic clouds of the
Archer. Against that brilliant mist of suns,
he distinguished the leaves of the immense
valve above him, scarcely damaged by that
unexpected salvo from the Challenge.

Nearer, straight above, he could see that
queerly narrow winding footway, where the
Invaders must have moved. He caught a
faint gleam of starlight on the bright rail above
it, a rail too high for things like men.

Once again he tried to picture them, the
beings that must have walked that contra-
terrene ramp. But he knew he never could
-even the word “walk” must be wrong, he
thought, because they had used no steps. He
tried to abandon the effort, because he saw
now that it was only a road to madness.

Still he didn’t want to move his head. He
supposed that he would die here, it didn’t mat-
ter when. Von Falkenberg needn’t even bother
to make certain of his kill. Because half a
billion kilometers of the spatial night could
be counted on to finish anything the shells
had left alive.

Anders wondered what had happened to

AST— 8R

115

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Ann and little McGee. He had tried to push
them down to safety, but there was no pre-
dicting exactly what half a metric ton of de-
tonating tritonite would do. And he couldn’t
even try to call them now, because his helmet
light was dead.

What was left of them would stay here, he
supposed, along with the frozen corpses of the
Jovians and whatever strange dust the Invad-
ers might have left. Their remains would only
add another grim little chapter, to the ma-
chine’s untold story of mystery and death.

He lay still, watching the ramp and the rail.
If he were only quiet enough, he thought, one
of the Invaders would soon come along. He
wanted to see why it used no steps, and why
it was so thin and tall.

Would it be clad in some strange armor? Or
had the Invaders been less fragile and fatally
volatile than men, really spacemen? His slow
brain fumbled with that problem, and gave it
up. Thinking was difficult.

Somehow, a gray fog was thickening in his
head.

He lay there, staring up through the fog,
watching the ramp and the rail. If he only
waited long enough, one of the Invaders would
come somehow along the narrow footway,
holding somehow to that high rail.

But the fog grew thicker. He could hardly
see through it. The throbbing in his head
was fainter now, not even sharp enough to
keep him awake. He was suddenly afraid that
he would sleep, before the tall Invader came.

Then he saw it.

The thing was bending over him, a vague
blur in the fog. He knew it must be tall and
narrow. He knew its contraterrene touch
meant death. But he didn’t want to move his
head, and there was nothing he could do.

He couldn’t see it, through the fog. But
it was beside him, down on the terrene plat-
form. It began fumbling with his armor. The
strange touch of it made light, and he waited
to die.

But the liuht was not blue annihilating fire.
It was only the glow of his helmet light turned
on. It showed the figure bending over him.
He saw, with a weak, immense relief, that the
thing was Ann O’Banion.

She closed the battery ease under his shoul-
ders, and did something to the controls on the
breast of his armor. The air unit began to
hum again. The air was suddenly good to
breathe. He hadn’t realized how stale it was.
Immediately he felt stronger. The throbbing

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 1

was gone from his head, and he tried to sit
up-

“Better lie still,” she advised. “You were al-
most asphyxiated.”

“You — ” His voice was disconcertingly in-
audible, and he tried again. “You are all
right?”

“Yes, you pushed us out of the way,” she
told him. “You were the only casualty.
Caught a shell splinter against your back.
Only knocked you out — it didn’t penetrate.
But it ruined your battery pack. You were
nearly dead before Cap’n Rob could salvage
another, from the Jovian on the other plat-
form.”

It was good to breathe. The gray fog was
clearing, but still Anders didn’t want to move.
He just lay there for a time, looking up
through the lenses at her face. He liked the
curve of her tanned cheek, and the tilt of her
freckled nose.

He tried to speak again.

“Ann — ” Her gray eyes, looking down at
him, were clear and kind and honest. She
waited, but he couldn’t go on. Speech was
still too difficult, and something choked him.
“I’m just glad — that you’re all right.”

She smiled a little, but her kind eyes stayed
dark and solemn. She adjusted the air unit
again, and then helped him sit up against the
great curving wall. The gray fog was gone.

“Thanks, beautiful.” He grinned feebly.
“Have I been out long?”

“A dreadful time.” She looked at her watch.
“Must be four hours. I was afraid we couldn’t
help you, till Cap’n Rob brought the bat-
teries.”

“Where’s von Falkenberg?” he whispered
anxiously. “With the Challenge?”

“Gone.” Her voice turned flat. “They just
fired that one salvo. Cap’n Rob looked out,
afterward. He saw them welding a seetee bed-
plate to the hull — one they had cut out, to
take back to their lab. Then they left, at full
acceleration.”

Staring at him with dark, strange eyes, she
added:

“They were headed straight for Freedonia.”

“Thought they would,” Anders said.

“Now von Falkenberg will try to wreck the
hammer and the shops, and everything we
have on Freedonia.” Her low voice was bitter,
almost accusing. “Old Jim Drake and Rick
will probably be killed. They don’t even have
a ship. They haven’t got a chance.”

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“Sorry, beautiful,” Anders said.

“You ought to be,” she told him solemnly.
“Because I know the Drakes would have given
their work to the Mandate, to stop the Mar-
tians. We had agreed on that. But now the
Martians will have seetee.”

She made a tired, hopeless gesture.

“Now there’s nothing that can stop them,
not since you gave the Drakes away. Seetee
can smash the Mandate, and overrun the plan-
ets. The Martian Reich will be worse than
Interplanet ever was.”

Anders met her bitter eyes.

“ ’Fraid of that, beautiful. Von Falken-
berg said I wasn’t very clever, and seems I
haven’t been.” He shrugged, in the silver ar-
mor. “But there’s no use to talk about it
now.”

Ann nodded gravely, beyond the lens.

“No use,” she agreed. “We’ll never know
what happens. Even if von Falkenberg comes
back with another expedition, to look for more
loot for Mars, he’ll find us as dead as the In-
vaders.”

She glanced up at the winding empty foot-
way where the seetee things had moved, with
its railing too high for men to reach; at the
landing where they must have stood, too nar-
row for the feet of men. He saw that she shiv-
ered.

“Where’s McGee?” he asked suddenly.

“Cap’n Rob went down inside again.” Her
eyes dropped to the black yawning doorway,
where the deadly little railways ran off the
platform. Her tired voice had an edge of hor-
ror.

“What’s he doing?”

“Looking for more batteries,” she said. “He
thought there must be some with charge left
in them, on the Jovians who died down inside.
He thought there might be enough to last a
good many days.”

“So that’s the ending, gorgeous?” Anders
gave her a bitter little grin. “We’re marooned
here, like McGee was, half a billion kilometers
from the nearest planet. Not a chance to get
away, or even call for help. We just go out,
with the last of the Jovians’ batteries?”

Her tired head nodded, in the big helmet.

“That’s the ending, Paul.”

He sat there a long time, just looking
through the lenses at the childlike graveness
of her face. He wanted very much to help
her, and he was feeling stronger now. But
| there was nothing left that human strength
could do.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

118

“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry for you, and for
poor little McGee. Don’t think I really mind
quite so much, about myself. After all, gor-
geous, I wasn’t really very proud of that job
Hood gave me.”

“I knew you weren’t.”

“Then you’ll try to understand?” he whis-
pered anxiously. “Understand that I had to
try my best to do it, even if I didn’t like it
much? Just because I was an Earthman and
an Interplanet engineer?”

She put her glove in his.

“I understand,” she said.

“Thanks.” He squeezed her armored hand.
“Now I s’pose we can be friends — now when
nothing matters any more.” He grinned at
her. “But you were a pleasant enemy, beau-
tiful.”

“I’d rather be friends,” she said.

He could see the sober little smile on her
brown childish face, lifting the firm curve of
her lips. He thought he would like to kiss her,
but for the two hard plates of leaded glass
between.

They sat there on the dark platform. An-
ders still felt stronger. But he knew that any
movement or exertion would drain vital cur-
rent from the batteries, minutes and hours
from their lives.

Ann didn’t' speak. He began to feel that
he could hear the silence of the dead Invaders.
It was a heavy, oppressive stillness, that had
endured since men were scarcely men. It be-
came a smothering, dreadful thing, more ter-
rible than sound.

He saw that Ann was watching the empty
curve of that ramp and railing, with a dark
terror in her eyes. He found that he was
watching, too. They were waiting for the
beings that had moved along that narrow, step-
less footway, and used those railings above the
reach of men.

He sat up, suddenly.

For he knew that only madness would ever
walk those empty ramps again. The Invaders
were dead. He wanted desperately to hear
the warm sound of Ann’s voice, even though
the photophone current might be draining
away their lives.

“You must have had time to talk to Mc-
Gee?” He looked at her, keenly. “Does he
know anything about the Invaders— and what
this machine was for?”

She stared for a moment through that broad
doorway, where the harmless-seeming little

railways ran into the machine’s chasm of dead
silent darkness. Anders thought she shivered.

“They weren’t men,” she whispered. “Cap’n
Rob says you can tell that from the things they
built. They must have been very tall, and
they couldn’t climb steps, and none of their
tools would be right for human hands — even if
men could ever touch them.”

“Are there any skeletons?”

“Cap’n Rob didn’t find any,” she said. “He
thinks maybe they all left the machine, at the
last. Or maybe they just didn’t have skele-
tons. Cap’n Rob doesn’t know what they
looked like, but he says he understands them,”
Her eyes lifted to that narrow winding foot-
way, where once those contraterrene things
had moved. She followed the gleam of the
stars on that too-high railing, that it was death
for a man to touch.

“Cap’n Rob must have had a pretty terrible
time, at first.” Her low voice shivered again,
“Marooned here, and hiding from the Jovians,
and watching them die because they didn’t
understand the machine.

“He doesn’t like to talk about it. You know
he’s very sensitive, under that calm look of
his, and he never talks very much. But we’ve
been good friends, since I was just a little girl.
He told me a good deal, while we were wait-
ing.

“It was bad at first, he said. But pretty
soon he began to understand the machine and
the beings that made it. Then there wasn’t
very much danger to him any longer, because
he had begun to feel at home.”

Anders caught his breath. For the machine
had become a living enemy to him, deadly and
treacherous, colossal and inscrutable and im-
placable. It had trapped and destroyed a
whole ship’s company of fighting spacemen and
engineers. But little Rob McGee, quiet and
mild and insignificant in his stubby armor, had
said he felt at home!

“You know about his gift?” Ann went on.
“How he always knows the time? How he
could tell Rick the position and the mass of
this machine, before he had ever seen it?”
Anders nodded, with a remembered awe.
“Cap’n Rob hates that gift,” her quiet, voice
continued. “Because it sets him apart from
men. It makes him so terribly lonely. Per-
haps he really is a mutant — though that’s a
dreadful word. Because he has told me that
human beings always seem a little strange, and
hard for him to understand.

119 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“But I think that gift is what saved his life,
when the Jovian engineers were blundering
into death all around him. Because he could
always understand any machine, with just a
glance. And he told me he knew the Invaders,
just from their machines. They loved the
beauty of mathematics, he said, because it is
in all the things they made. Then he gave that
apologetic little laugh of his, and said the In-
vaders were more rational than men.”

“Then McGee knows what this thing was?”
Anders sat straighter again, and his voice had
a brittle ring of excitement. In the dim ruddy
glow of his helmet light, he searched Ann’s
solemn face. “Did he tell you that?”

Her eyes were thoughtful, very grave.

“Cap’n Rob was talking just to me. But
I suppose it’s all right for me to tell you. now
that we aren’t enemies. Give me your word
of honor, that you’re through with Inter-
planet?”

“Word of honor, beautiful.” Anders grinned.
“If you think that matters now. And what
was the machine?”

“A power plant,” she said.

"Eh?” He gulped a startled breath.
“Power?”

“They burned terrene matter, against see-
tee.”

“Now I get it!” He stared down across the
vast starlit cylinder, at the dim mass of that
mighty cradle where a terrene ship had rested;
at the dark yawning ore chutes, with their un-
seen bond-dissolving screens, that had received
the terrene cargo.

“Now I see!” he whispered. “They scooped
up terrene meteors and such, to be dumped in
those chutes. S’pose they shipped seetee stuff
from their own planet, to the other end of the
machine?”

“That’s what Cap’n Rob says.”

“That’s power!” he exclaimed. “Our U-235
is no more than just a treadmill, compared to
that. Use any elements for fuel, and the re-
action is complete. But how did they use it,
way out at space?”

“Cap’n Rob says they were experts, at power
transmission,” the girl said. “You remember
those five golden spikes — one of them broken
off? Those were the terminals of their trans-
mitter. He says they had receivers, on their
spaceships and in the cities on their planet,
tuned to pick it up.”

“Wireless transmission!” Anders was
breathless. “What we’ve been dreaming of,
for two hundred years. Y’know, beautiful, this

machine could be the best thing that ever
happened to the human race!”

“Or the worst,” she reminded him soberly,
“if the Martians get it.”

He nodded, silent for a time.

“Too bad we failed,” he said at last. “ ’Cause
y’see, beautiful, the big reason for all the con-
flict and rivalry between the planets — even for
the war the Martians want to start — is the
coming shortage of uranium. Never really
plentiful. When you find it, only one part in
two hundred is the power isotope. And even
pure U-235 doesn’t give you the complete ef-
ficiency of the seetee reaction.”

An excitement grew, in his thoughtful voice.

“The Mandate was really set up for a kind
of umpire, to keep the planets from fighting
over the depleted deposits that are left. So
far, it has kept a kind of uncertain peace. But
seetee — in the right hands — could provide
power to end all the famine and the fear and
the struggle.”

Ann smiled faintly, beyond the thick lens.

“Now you’re talking like old Jim Drake,
when men used to call him Seetee Drake,”
she said. “That’s the way we always planned
to use seetee — to make an end of crooked poli-
tics in the Mandate, and turn it into the basis
of a real democratic union of the planets.”

“Could be done,” Anders said.

“But it won’t be.” She shook her tired
head. “Not by the Martian Reich.”

Anders leaned wearily back against the tall
rusted wall. For a time they were silent,
thoughtful. Once again his eyes lifted to the
narrow empty ramps of the Invaders, where
men could never step.

“Wonder what their history was,” he said
at last. “McGee learn anything?”

“Of course they must have come from a see-
tee system,” Ann told him. “Cap’n Rob said
he hadn’t found anything that looked like
books or records or even any marks on their
machines — maybe they didn’t need to write.
But he told me what he had surmised about
them.”

“Let’s have it,” Anders urged.

Their photophone cells were dim, to save
the precious current. Ancient shadows seemed
to creep and thicken, all about the platform.
Watching that narrow empty footway, as he
listened, Anders tried to imagine something
moving there — something that didn’t walk,
taller than a man, and queerly thin.

“Cap’n Rob says there was some other dis-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION”

120

aster,” her grave low voice began. “Some-
thing hurled the Invader — the planet, I mean
— out of its native seetee system. Perhaps
some passing star pulled it off its orbit.

“The Invaders, anyhow — now I mean the
people — must have had a high culture, already.
If they hadn’t, they’d all have frozen to death.
Because the planet must have wandered in
interstellar space for thousands or maybe mil-
lions of years, without any sun.

“Cap’n Rob thinks that is when they built
the machine — when they saw they were going
to be thrown off into space — to give them
atomic heat and power during that endless
dreadful night.

“Because the machine seems very old — all
the terrene parts, that were hard for them to
polish and repair. That's why half of it’s so
rusty. Cap’n Rob thinks they must have kept
it running for hundreds of thousands of year,
at least.

“Finally, more than eighty-seven thousand
years ago, their dark wandering planet came
into our system. It collided with the trans-
Martian planet. The fragments made our
minor planets, and the seetee drift. The In-
vaders managed to save their power plant,
but not themselves.”

Her low voice faded into ancient silence. By
the dim red glow of his helmet light, Anders

could see her tired wondering face. She, too,
was staring at that empty ramp, where the tall
Invaders once had moved.

“What happened to them?” His voice was
deeply puzzled. “With all their science, they
should have been able to predict the collision,
years ahead. Why, with the power from this
machine, you could deflect even a planet
enough to prevent collision!”

She nodded soberly, in the dim helmet.

“That’s what Cap’n Rob said. He doesn’t
know what happened. Only the machinery
looks as if it had been neglected, toward the
end. The collector ships are lost, and the fuel
in most of the bins is running low. That bro-
ken transmitter tower was never repaired.

“And Cap’n Rob thinks they weren’t expect-
ing the collision, because the machine was still
dangerously near when it happened. The re-
action of its drive field against the fragments
was what enabled him to find it, you know.
He thinks perhaps they were still so close that
the radiation killed the crew.

“Of course they couldn’t tell whether our
system was going to be terrene or seetee, till
they got here. Cap’n Rob thinks maybe they
just forgot the difference. He thinks they must
have tried to migrate to our planets, in the
old spaceships they still knew how to operate

121

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

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— and just burned up when they touched the
atmosphere.”

Beyond the pale red glow of their helmet
lights, the dark seemed denser. Anders looked
up again at the empty contraterrene footway,
and the queerly narrow landings, and the hand-
rails too high for the hands of men.

“S’pose their culture just decayed,” he sug-
gested. “Died for want of contact, while they
were out at space. No challenge. No conflict.
No reaction of opposing forces. Must have
been the machine itself that killed them — just
because it worked too well.”

Staring into the starlit dark, however, he
was still unsatisfied. For all that hypotheti-
cal drama of their triumph and tragedy, the
Invaders were still enigma. The fate of
those tall beings that had used no steps was
still a riddle, as baffling as the puzzle of their
beginning, or their language, or their physical
appearance. He knew it was no use to search
their empty ramps and landings. They were
sunk forever into the black eternal mystery of
time and space.

“Oh — Paul!”

Ann frightened him, with that breathless
little cry. She clutched his steel sleeve, with
a gesture of panic — for she, too, must have
been watching that empty footway. Anders
snatched for his gun, and found that it was
gone.

But the thing that came out of that broad
black doorway, out of the deadly mysterious
depths of the machine, was nothing thin or tall
or terrible. It was only little Rob McGee,
quiet and half apologetic, smiling a little at
Ann with his mild squinted eyes.

“Oh, Cap’n Rob!” She drew a quick re-
lieved breath, and then asked him anxiously,
“Did you find any batteries?”

“No batteries.” He shook his head, in the
silvered helmet. “Ann, will you please come
here? I’ve something to say to you.” He
looked at Anders, and his voice was gently
apologetic. “If you will excuse us, captain.”

Ann turned, with a puzzled manner. He
gestured with his glove, into the black space
from which he had come. She hesitated, with
an apprehensive glance at Anders. But Rob
McGee caught her armored hand. They lifted
over the deadly little railways, and went back
into the dark.

XV.

Anders turned his helmet light down to a
faint red spark, to save the precious current.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

122

He made himself sit very still, to stanch the
drain of power through the air unit. Alone in
the starlit cylinder, he waited for Ann and
McGee.

He tried to keep his eyes off the insoluble
riddle of the narrow winding footway and the
too-high rail above it. Resolutely, he looked
out through the open valve. But even the
familiar stars were cold and distant company.

He couldn’t help wondering whether Ann
would come back. Perhaps little McGee had
really found more charged batteries on the
dead men, but not enough to share. After all,
he reminded himself, he had been an enemy.

Grimly, he tried to tell himself that it didn’t
matter very much. But it did. He wanted
Ann. She was a warm bright lamp, that kept
back the thin ghastly ghosts of the dead In-
vaders, waiting in the dark to creep back along
their old footway when these human intruders
were gone.

“Paul!”

She called to him, and the red cheering glow
of her helmet light swam back from the chasm
of night, beyond that doorway. She was alone.
She lifted over the little railways, and dropped
beside him on the platform.

“Glad to see you, beautiful!”

He rose from Where he had been sitting,
propped against the rusty wall. He turned up
his air unit and the helmet light. Fresh oxy-
gen quickened his senses. In the light’s
stronger glow, he saw that her face was taut
and pale.

“Paul—”

She whispered his name, and paused. Slowly,
she came to him. Her gray eyes searched
through his helmet lens.

“ ’S’matter, beautiful?”

■ For a time she didn’t speak.

“We aren’t marooned.” Her low anxious
voice held no relief. “That was what Cap’n
Rob wanted to tell me. He has a way to save
our lives.”

“Very int’resting.” He touched the empty
catch at his belt. “So that’s why he took my
gun? And now we’re enemies again.” He
managed to grin at her tense face. “By-by,
beautiful!”

“Paul!”

That was a hurt, breathless protest. She
caught his gloved hand, which he had lifted
in an ironic gesture of farewell, and held it
tight in both her own. In the dim rosy light
from his helmet, her face looked urgent and
distressed.

“ ’Sail right, darlin’,” he told her cheerfully.
“I know you can’t very well do anything for
me, now that we’re enemies again. You don’t
want me reporting to Commissioner Hood, and
turning this machine over to Interplanet, and
throwing you into Pallas IV.”

She made an angry little gulp.

“Fortunes of war, gorgeous.” He pulled his
glove out of hers. “Don’t worry your pretty
little head. Go right along and leave me.
Don’t expect any better than I gave.”

“Please don’t talk that way.” His light
glittered on her tears. “Please, Paul — you’ve
already done your best for Interplanet. It
isn’t your fault you failed. But now — ” She
gulped, and blinked at the tears. “Can’t you
give up now?”

“So you’re demanding my surrender, won-
derful?” He grinned at her. “Maybe you’ll
even offer to accept my parole — mv solemn
word of honor, as an Interplanet engineer and
an officer of the High Space Guard, never
again to commit any hostile act against the
sovereign firm of Drake, McGee & Drake?”
She nodded, not smiling.

“Will you, Paul — please?”

“What if I won’t?” He looked past her, into
the starlit dark. “S’pose then you’ll leave me
here, to watch that railing by myself? I can
swallow a hundred miligrams of ametine, when
my battery gives out. And von Falkenberg
will find what’s left, along with the dead Jo-
vians and those empty walks, when he comes
back to take possession.”

He grinned at her bleak, taut face.

“Hard choice, darlin’!”

Ann tried to stamp her foot. The heavy
silvered armor made the gesture awkward and
childish and somehow pathetic. Beyond the
lens, Anders saw angry tears burst into her
dark troubled eyes.

“Beast!” she gasped. “You know we have
to take you.”

“I’m sorry, Ann.” The grin was gone, and
he felt tears in his own eyes. He stepped
clumsily forward, and caught her gloves, and
held them both. “I’m giving you that pa-
role,” he told her quietly. “I’m through with
the Guard and Interplanet.”

She caught her breath, voiceless.

“ ’S’fact,” he said. “And maybe sometime
you’ll let me go to work for Drake, McGee &
Drake? How about that, gorgeous?”

She nodded, winking at her tears. Her
taut brown face slowly relaxed into a smile.

123

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Again he thought that her lips, beyond the
two thick lenses, would be very nice to kiss.
He put his arm impulsively around her, and
grinned at the click of steel on steel.

“And how do we leave?”

She gulped. “In the Jane.”

“But I thought — ”

“Cap’n Rob hates to lie.” She was smiling
still, and her gloves clung to his. “But he can
when he has to. You see, the Jovians really
missed, when they fired on the Jane. Because
Cap’n Rob saw the flash of their guns, and
dived behind the machine. He had time to
make that call to Freedonia, and then he hid
the Jane.”

‘‘Eh! But where?”

“You’d never guess.” Her gray eyes were
beautiful and bright. “It’s in the other cyl-
inder, at the other end of the machine. That’s
another berth, like this, except everything’s
seetee. He knew the Jovians wouldn’t follow
him there.”

“The Jane isn’t seetee.”

“Of course not,” she said cheerfully. “But
you see he already had that seetee bedplate
welded to the hull, to bring it back to Free-
donia. He just left the Jane anchored on
that.”

“Able man, Cap’n Rob!” Anders grinned.
“Y’know, darlin’, I think I’m going to like the
whole firm of Drake, McGee & Drake — though
with a natural preference for one of the silent
partners.”

They waited, standing out on the cylinder’s
rim. Anxiously, they watched the black splen-
dor of star-frosted space, and at last they saw
the little tug. It came flying around the ribbed
curve of that enormous rusty dome. A
meteor-blistered rectangular ingot, it looked
tiny and ugly and sturdy as Rob McGee.

It dropped beside them. Anders looked for
the bedplate that had been welded like a sil-
ver mushroom to the battered hull. But he
found only the bright fresh mark of a cutting
torch, high up the side.

The valve swung open, above the worn
ground gear. The tall Earthman followed Ann
up the accommodation steps. They shrugged
and twisted out of their armor, and climbed
the ladder well five decks to the pilothouse —
for the Good-by Jane had no elevator.

Rob McGee was standing by the periscope,
when Anders followed Ann into the tiny gray-
walled room. His mildew-green space coat
looked a little too large. He gave Ann a smile

of silent welcome. Then his square face set,
and he turned to Anders with calm disapprov-
ing eyes.

“But he’s all right, Cap’n Rob,” Ann pro-
tested.

“She means I’m resigning from Interplanet,
and retiring from the Guard,” Anders told him.
“Hood won’t like it much, but I’m an asterite
now. And Ann has promised me a job.”

“Now that’s different.” Nimble on small
feet, McGee came and took his hand in a pow-
erful grip. A quick smile of liking transformed
his seamed leathery face, so it wasn’t ugly any
longer. “Welcome to the firm!”

One squinted eye winked at Ann.

“And we’re going to need you, captain,”
McGee added soberly. “Because we’ve got
quite a job, to beat the Martians to the con-
quest of seetee.”

“A job we can’t hope to do,” Ann put in
bitterly, “if von Falkenberg wrecks the shops
on Freedonia.” She looked at Anders, and he
could see the burning accusation in her eyes.
“And if he tries to murder the Drakes.”

Anders turned away from her bleak, shad-
owed face. She still blamed him, he saw, for
sending the Martian agent back to Freedonia.
That fact was a barrier between them, more
actual than steel and leaded glass had been.

He spoke to Rob McGee.

“Where’s that bedplate, Cap’n Rob?
Thought you were taking one back for a
model? ’Magine we could take it apart, some-
how. I’m willing to help.”

“Thank you, captain.” McGee made an-
other leathery smile. “But we don’t need it
now, and I cut it off the hull. You see, while
Ann was looking after you, I found the shops
where the Invaders made those bedplates.”
He nodded toward the companion. “But if
you’re going to join the firm, I’ll show you
what I found.”

Breathless, they followed him down to his
tiny cabin. He fumbled under the bunk and
hauled out something on the end of a rope.
He towed it into the narrow wardroom, and
tried to lay it on the table. Ann made a
startled little cry. Anders merely stared.

It was a disk-shaped plate of smooth gray
metal, nearly a meter in diameter. In the
center was a ten-centimeter hole. Some five
centimeters thick at the rim of that hole, it
tapered to a few millimeters at the rounded
edge. Nothing about it seemed extraordinary,
except that it didn’t touch the table.

“Why — ” Ann gasped, “it floats!”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

124

For the disk had suspended itself in the air,
a dozen centimeters above the little table. It
didn’t touch the bulkhead beyond, and it
didn’t touch their bodies. When Ann reached
gingerly out to touch it, it moved quickly back
from her hand. The rope was tied through
the hole, and Anders noticed that it stood out
in a broad loop, not touching the metal any-
where.

“Push it down,” McGee invited.

Anders and the breathless girl pressed with
their hands. A yielding resistance opposed
them. The disk moved toward the table top,
but not all the way. Their hands didn’t quite
touch it, not even when they pushed with all
their strength.

They let it bob up again.

“How come?” Anders whispered.
“Paragravity,” McGee told him gently.
“Permanent negative paragravity.” The
tall Earthman caught his breath. “Something
we’ve been looking for, the last hundred years!
The phenomena of paragravity always seemed
to lie between normal gravity and magnetism.
The equations of the permanent negative field
were written a hundred years ago. But we
could never find an alloy to hold it.”

“This is it,” McGee said softly. “I looked
at the furnaces, and the units where the disks
were activated and assembled. I know the
process. And the Drakes can analyze the al-
loy — if von Falkenberg has left us any lab.”
Anders pushed the gray disk down again.
“Surface effect!” he exclaimed. “Obeys the
inverse-square law. Half the distance, four
times the repulsion. Means contact is darn
near impossible — convenient, when you’re go-
ing to set it against a seetee counter-disk!
S’pose those bedplates are layer-cake affairs?
Plates like this locked to the terrene stem, and
seetee counter-plates fastened to the case?”
Nodding, McGee showed him a scrawled dia-
gram.

“What a bearing metal!” Anders had
reached again for the disk, and it slithered
evasively out of his hands. “No contact means
no friction. Explains why that machine ran
on so long. Peegee fields just don’t wear out!”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” McGee blinked
his squinted eyes, and his square face smiled
approvingly. “Yes, I think Drake, McGee &
Drake are really going to need you, captain.”
He anchored the skittish disk back under
his bunk, and they climbed again to the square
little pilothouse. With his face in the peri-

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scope hood, McGee lifted the Good-by Jane
away from that colossal rusted valve. He set
the pilot-robot on a course for Freedonia.

Anders felt deeply relieved, to let that
mighty machine drop behind. Perhaps its
greatest enigmas were yet unanswered. Now,
he never hoped to know what those things had,
been, that once had climbed the winding nar-
row footways beside those high contraterrene
rails. But that was only a futile riddle of the
dead past. He was glad to leave it, for the'
living future dawning.

“Happy, darlin’?” he whispered to Ann
O’Banion.

But she seemed tense and apprehensive.

“How could we be happy, Paul?” Her dark
eyes were still accusing. “Have you forgot-
ten about the Drakes?” She turned anxiously
to little McGee. “Now, Cap’n Rob, since wei
have the ship, can’t we call and warn them
that von Falkenberg is coming?”

The little spaceman shook his head.

“The . Challenge is straight between,” he
told her. “It has a sensitive receiver, and it’s
only six hours away. Von Falkenberg would
be sure to hear the call, and turn back to finish
us.”

“Nothing we can do.” Anders grinned
cheerfully. “And the Drakes can fight their
own battles. So smile again, gorgeous.”

He touched her brown bare arm, but she
moved away.

“Sorry, Paul.” Her quiet voice seemed
friendly, but her eyes were dark again with
blame. “You see I grew up with Rick Drake,
and old Jim was a better father than my own.
If anything happened to them, I just couldn’t
stand it.”

“ ’Scuse me, darlin’.” He nodded gravely.
“I understand.”

He knew she couldn’t forget his final chal-
lenge to von Falkenberg. He was responsible
for the danger to Freedonia, and that made
a chasm between them, deeper than the gulf of
space. The five days of their homeward flight
seemed very long to Anders.

The Challenge was a little faster than the
Good-by Jane. McGee estimated that von
Falkenberg would reach Freedonia twelve
hours ahead of them. As that time ap-
proached, on the last day back, they took anx-
ious turns at the tug’s single periscope,
i Ann had the instrument when it happened.

’ Freedonia was still several million kilome-
ters ahead, and Anders knew that the airless

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

126

atom of dark nickel-iron was not yet visible
in the field. But he saw the asterite girl catch
her breath. She stared intently for an endless
moment, and then turned slowly from the
black hood.

“That was it!” Her tired eyes looked at
Anders, dilated and tortured and accusing. “A
hot blue flash, right where Freedonia must be.
It had the color of a seetee explosion. It
means von Falkenberg has wrecked the ham-
mer — and likely murdered the Drakes!”

Anders tried to grin, but his lean face turned
solemn.

“Please, darlin’,” he protested quickly.
“Might be you’re mistaken. And I can’t quite
stand that look on your face.”

He turned quickly to McGee.

“S’pose you call Freedonia on the photo-
phone, Cap’n Rob? Now we’re close enough
to run for Obania, if we must. But I don’t
think von Falkenberg will answer.”

With a curious look on his brown seamed
face, McGee stepped nimbly to the ship’s
photophone. His soft calm voice went out on
the beam of questing light:

“McGee, calling Freedonia. . . . McGee, call-
ing Freedonia.”

Ann stood waiting, pale and silent, with
! small brown hands knotted into desperate
fists. Little McGee appeared deliberate as al-
ways. He paused to draw again on his short
black pipe.

At such a distance, Anders knew, the thin
beams'of modulated light should bring a reply
in less than a minute. But the receiver merely
hissed with the faint dry rustle of stellar inter-
ference. *

A long minute passed, and then another.
Listening to the thin eternal whisper of the
starlight, Anders couldn’t help expecting it to
turn into the hoarse moronic croak of Franz
von Falkenberg.

“Hello, Rob!” It wasn’t the Martian’s rasp,
but the deep rusty voice of old Jim Drake.
“Mighty glad to hear you. We’ve been wor-
ried — ”

Anders felt a choking gladness in his throat.
McGee’s leathery face didn’t change, but the
squinted eyes turned bright with tears. Ann
made a little gulping sob. She gave the Earth-
man a dark, startled glance, and snatched the
receiver.

“Oh. Seetee — ” She swallowed, breathless.
“Are you all right? And Rick? You got
away from von Falkenberg? You weren’t hurt
in that explosion?”

But old Jim Drake wouldn’t hear her ques-
tions, for several seconds yet. They all leaned
close to the receiver, listening. The girl was
staring at Anders, with dark strange eyes.
And the deep rusty voice went on:

“ — worried, since you called. Say, Rob, a
queer thing just happened. Maybe you can
explain it. We saw a seetee flash, out where
the mine field is. Can’t quite understand it,
because the mines are far inside our private
swarm of seetee drift — ”

The deep voice paused, and changed.

“Ann?” Back across the thread of trem-
bling light, his delayed answer came loud and
glad above the whisper of the stars. “Why,
of course we’re all right, Ann. We haven’t
seen von Falkenberg. And there was no ex-
plosion, except that flash in space.”

The girl was staring at Anders, not breath-
ing-

“But what about you, Ann?” came the voice
of the old engineer. “We’ve been uneasy.
Tell me, how did you get aboard the Jane?
What happened to your Interplanet friend,
Captain Anders?”

Grinning, the tall Earthman took the re-
ceiver from her.

“Anders speaking, Mr. Drake. And don’t
hang up. ’Cause things are different now. I’m
quitting Interplanet. Ann has promised me
a job — helping you build the seetee machines,
on McGee’s bedplate. And I can tell you why
you haven’t seen von Falkenberg.”

Ann listened, wide-eyed, not moving.

“Y’see,” Anders said, “that flash was Franz
von Falkenberg. He had taken the Challenge,
with a crew of spies and mu rneers. He was
carrying about a ton of seetee — one of those
bedplates, welded outside his hull for a model.
He tried to approach Freedonia, to smash your
seetee hammer. But he must have left his
safety field on, so it tripped your peegee
mines.”

In that gray padded room, tiny and crowded
with the astragation instruments, Ann moved
a little toward the lean black-clad Earthman.
Her brown smooth throat pulsed, to a hard
gulp. Her gray eyes shone with sudden tears.

“So you planned it that way, Paul?” she
whispered huskily. “When Franz von Falken-
berg thought he had everything — when he
was leaving us marooned in that terrible ma-
chine — you sent him back to be wrecked
against the mines?”

“Seemed the only thing to do,” Anders said.

127

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“But why — ” She swallowed hard. “Why
didn’t you tell me what you meant?”

“Couldn’t,” Anders said. “I was sure no-
body on the Challenge knew about the mines.
But still it was a pretty desperate gamble,
to take with such good friends of yours. Von
Falkenberg has said I wasn’t very clever.
’Fraid he’d turn out right.”

His voice dropped low, and his gray eyes
turned dark as hers.

“But it hurt — the way you looked at me,
darlin’.”

“Oh, Paul, I didn’t understand.” She
gulped again. “I was worried so about the
Drakes, and couldn’t quite believe that you
were really one of us.” Her full lips tried to
smile. “Besides, I don’t think you were very
clever, really, not to tell me what you were
planning. But, please, can you forgive me?”
She stood tall and near, very lovely in the
blue silk that had been his pajamas. Her
dark hair had a clean perfume. Her tanned
soft face was bright and eager, and her wet
eyes were smiling. Her parted lips looked
very nice to kiss.

And now the barrier between them was
gone.

“Just lemme show you, darlin’.”

Little Rob McGee took away the dangling
photophone receiver, because he saw they had
both completely forgotten it. He told old
Jim Drake to expect them in twelve hours, and
hung up, and calmly filled his stubby pipe.

They came to Freedonia, twelve hours later.
McGee brought the Good-by Jane down
through the warning beacons and the drift
and the field of unseen mines, to a safe landing
on that bleak black cube of airless iron.

The Drakes came aboard again. Still they
were tired, red-stubbled men, but now they
were giants again, mighty with the strength of
spatial conquest. Old Jim Drake crushed the
Earthman’s hand, rumbling softly:

“Glad to take you in the firm, captain.”
The bronze-hair ,d younger giant, however,
still seemed a little mol. Ann, with her gray
eyes shining, took h.m aside to the end of the
narrow wardroom and whispered something.
He came back to Anders, grinning and awk-
ward and likable.

“Congratulations, captain,” he said. “Sorry
if I didn’t seem quite friendly. But I
thought — ” With a flush on his space-burned
face, he turned incoherent. “Well, I mean—”
“You thought I wanted Karen?” His face
turned redder, and Anders grinned^ “And

maybe once I did, ’cause your redhead’s pretty
wonderful, Drake. But Ann’s the one for
me.”

His gray eyes looked at the tall girl in blue.

“Used to think we were opposites.” His
voice sank low again. “But that was just
’cause we happened to be fighting for oppos-
ing sides. Now, since we’ve settled that,
seems we’re pretty much alike.”

“Then we want you, Anders.”

And Rick Drake gave him a bronzed, mighty
hand.

Little McGee towed his skittishly elusive
peegee disk back into the narrow wardroom,
and displayed it floating above the table. The
two giants tested its bobbing repulsion, with
great eager hands. Tears wet the blue hol-
low eyes of old Jim Drake.

“Permanent negative paragravity!” His
low rusty voice was choked with glad emo-
tion. “That’s the solution I’ve been hunting,
for forty years. Now we can build the bed-
plates, to fill those empty pits. Now we can
finish the seetee shop.”

His powerful space-burned hands were
trembling, testing the magic of the untouch-
able disk.

“Looks as if the firm of Drake, McGee &
Drake is going to prosper, now,” Anders said.
“ ’Cause we’ve got more to give mankind than
Interplanet ever did. Now the spatial en-
gineers can really conquer space.”

He grinned at the tanned bright face of the
tall lovely girl beside him.

“I’m mighty lucky, to b’long tel the firm.”
The grin faded, and he took her hand, and
his low whisper turned very serious. “Darn
lucky, darlin’!”

Then he heard a cough, and the loud voice
of Rick Drake:

“ — just one danger, that I can see. Cap-
tain Anders and our mines finished Franz von
Falkenberg. But it’s possible he had already
made a photophone call to Mars, giving the
position of the Invaders’ power plant.”

Rob McGee took the short pipe out of his
mouth.

“I took care of that,” he told them calmly.
“You see, although that machine had been
badly neglected for the last hundred thousand
years or so they used it, I found the repulsion
drive still in working order — ”

“Eh!” Anders caught a startled breath,
then slowly nodded. “Never thought of that,
but s’pose it could be. Frictionless bearings

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

128

don’t wear out. Seetee fuel doesn’t deterio-
rate. But what did you do?”

McGee drew deliberately on his pipe.

“The last three days we were there,” he said,
“I had the drive field on, to push the machine
into a different orbit. Now it won’t come back
to the meteor belt. No danger the Martians
will find it, even if they look. The men of our
generation won’t see it again.”

His mild squinted eyes looked gravely at.
the tall straight Earthman, and the breathless
girl, and the two gaunt red-stubbled giants
still bent in fascination over the untouchable
disk.

“Not unless I tell them where to look,” Mc-
Gee added gently. “And I don’t think I will.”
Anders stared at the stubby little spaceman,
in the ill-fitting green space coat. McGee
looked shabby and ugly and utterly insignifi-
cant. For a moment it seemed utterly impos-
sible that he should be the sole trustee of that
lost planet’s unguessed legacy.

But he had been the finder of it, Anders re-
membered. His singular gift had vanquished
the haunting death that made it a trap for
men, and conquered its untold secrets. Now,
seeing the calm on his space-beaten face, se-
rene as his native stars, Anders felt that he
was worthy of that tremendous trust.

“B’lieve you’re right, Cap’n McGee,” the
Earthman said soberly. “That bedplate, and
the seetee machines we can build on it, ought
to be enough for our generation. ’Cause I
don’t think we need too much, that b’longed
to the Invaders. Unlike things react. Dunno
wfeat their culture would do to ours.”

Ann held his hand, her brown fingers tense.
“I’m awfully glad, Cap’n Rob,” she whis-
pered to McGee. “Glad that machine is gone.
Maybe you understand it, but nobody else
ever can.” Her golden-tanned shoulder shiv-
ered, under the blue silk. “Maybe you think
I’m silly, but I always felt the thing was
haunted, with the ghosts of the Invaders. I’m
glad to know they’re gone.”

McGee turned calmly away, filling his pipe
again. He joined the two gaunt red-bearded
spatial engineers, still absorbed in the miracle
of the untouchable disk, that would support
the contraterrene machines of tomorrow.

For Paul Anders and Ann O’Banion had for-
gotten him. They had even forgotten the thin
tall ghosts, that they had both imagined on
those narrow winding contraterrene footways,
where men could never tread.

THE END.

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WHAT IS SHE CALLING YOU-

HE-MAN

B

Charles

Atlas

► ELIEVE it or not — the girls are sizing you up all day long!
Whether they look at you TWICE is up to YOU! They
will if you have a rugged, healthy, big-muscled HE-MAN
body, glowing with strength and vigor, but they’ll just snicker
at you behind your back if you’re a skinny, no-muscle
WEAKLING! If YOU, too, want to feel those admiring
glances right through your back then listen to this:

Let Me Prove I Can Make
YOU a NEW MAN-

Will you give me just 15 “Dynamic Tension” can perform—

, , „ , „„„„„ right in the privacy of your own

minutes a day of your spare home! now — will you give my

time? That's all I need to method 15 minutes a day to get

PPAVP r.io”ir(llpqq nf Tinw the kind of HE-MAN build you

PRO v hi regardless or now have always longed to have?

old or young you are, or how

ashamed you may be of your ITDITir ROfIK

present physique — that I can r IICL D\Zw»m.

give you a body men envy “ Everlasting Health

and women admire. Biceps , c , ,,

that can dish it out, and a and Strength

muscle-ridged stomach that Just a post age stamp will bring

can take it. A full, deep bar- you y0 ur copy of ray famous book,

rel-chest. Legs that never “Everlasting Health and Strength,”
five \ tomrh sinewv back absolutely free. No wonder nearly

An nil n rm n l nl ?sinne hat 2 , 000,000 men have sent f 9 r this

An all arouna pnjsique tnat big 4 8 _ page story 0 f “Dynamic Ten-

can laugh at ANY kind Ot sion” — illustrated with action pho-

rough going. tos of myself and some of my

pupils. You’ll not only read about
We’re ALL in the Army today ! The secr . et T ° f

heavy war-time demands on strength s j 0 D „™bu, ynG ,
and endurance are no longer limited to see proof of f ,

front-line trenches. It’s only a matter of it! CHARLES

time until EVERY citizen is called to ATLAS, *****
shoulder his full share of the load. AL- Dept. 621, 115

READY the Army has enrolled men from East 23rd

18 to 64. And whether you do your part Street, New

in Uncle Sam’s Services or as a home- York, N. Y.

front civilian, you’ve GOT to _ .... _ __ _ _ _ m — — — — — -j
be in 100% SHAPE. Everyman, 1 cc ati ac '* col ■

young or old, owes it to himself | CHARLES ATLAS, Dept. 621 , I

to get a body with the bulldog ■ M5 East 23rd Street, New York, N. Y. g

staying power that double shifts ■ j vvant the pr00 f that your system of “Dy- .
of working call for. HOW DO B namic Tension” will help make a New Man |

YOG STICK UP’ . of me — give me a healthy, husky body and big .

" I muscular development. Send me your free

Would You Believe I Was j book - “Everlasting Health and Strength.” |

Once a 97 -lb. Weakling? | Name j

Yes, I was-a miserable 9?-poimd bag of | (Please print or write plainly i ,

skin and bones. But you’d never believe it to i |

look at me now, would you? Through my dis- _ Address j

covery of “Dynamic Tension” I changed myself j:

into "The World’s Most Perfectly-Developed ! City State ■

Man.” I’m LIVING PBOOF of the miracles — — — — — — — J

BE WISE 1